Two

Two

In the dark don't ever ask

What someone else is thinking,

While the ship is floundering,

And finally is sinking.

So much we don't and will never know

Despite the books we've read,

We'll leave this life as we came in -

Ignorant and dead.

Two points of view – two single lives -

And his a life of growth -

After what he said last night,

I begin to see them both.

I don't grow – I hate the word -

Come fertilize and grow me -

The bitch who told me I am bad

And didn't even know me!

 

Morning

Let's be grateful we're not in Iraq

And thank god for those who are,

As though there's mercy or justice in that.

Let's wish upon a star.

Little Tina who just let me have

A cup of coffee free,

I doubt I would if in her place

Be as generous as she.

Tonight when my check is in the bank

I'll buy a book for her -

And donate money to his amour

We'll have to disinter!

Last night he said what I had thought -

Like the Elegy of Grey -

He wants a friend – and doesn't see

He doesn't have to pay.

Despite his parents – such godly folk -

Who make the rector glad -

He's just a man with feelings and brains -

And he was never bad.

 

The Child

Before he was a man

Prepared to sneer at love,

Mock all altruism,

Work toward the top,

And in the name of Jesus

Get it for himself,

When he was a boy

He told me I was nice.

I thanked him. He was angry

And told me not to thank him

Because it was the truth.

The workings of his mother

Have taken their affect.

Now he is a person

Who won't say that again.

 

Sweet Songs

Is this what Orson Welles

Was doing at the end

Of “Kane” - a simple song

Not written to be sad?

Now it's what I'm doing.

I very softly sing them,

And suddenly I'm crying.

Though not a song in Kane.

“The Red River Valley”

“Apple Blossom Time”

“Let Me Call You Sweetheart”

And then The Rose was dead.

 

The Doctor

Trust your doctor. He knows best.

And he's your only shot.

You'll be well when dispossessed

Of every dime you've got.

 If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paper and Kindle.   On Amazon, just type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

The Immortal Ones

Lifestyles

A life of pot and television,

Beer and loveless sex -

Nether Coward, Wilde nor Kaufman -

Television isn't funny -

Never Kafka, only King -

When you've read a hundred stories -

La Scala or the Great White Way -

Interesting anecdotes -

No one you can tell them to -

No one who can tell you others -

But the freedom to discover

What you love and make it home

Before the preachers and the people

Tell you what you ought to love -

Love what everybody loves -

Get tattoos and get in step -

To be someone else's poet -

Millay and Brooke and Keats are mine -

Nothing lower than a license

Plate will tell you what to do -

Get tattoos and go to Jesus -

No one's funny anymore -

Who?

Who has ever told you

You are odious and wicked?

Do your sycophants

And lovers and your friends?

The sea would be a desert if

Your lover were Poseidon.

You would siphon up the water,

And you'd never pour it back.

The sky would have no stars.

You'd gather them in baskets,

Leave the midnight in a darkness.

Even Hades has some light.

But hell is where you came from,

And it's hell you will return to

When all destinies are over,

And the fate of Man is death.

 

Various Psychos

First are the psychos

Who murder and kill,

Do what they want to

And do what they will.

Then are the psychos

Forgiving and shy,

Wouldn't say no

If it meant they would die.

Psychos like Elwood,

Gregarious drunk -

Psychos like Stanley,

Inarticulate hunk -

Or psychos like Cato's

Malevolent punk -

The Immortal Ones

The false conviction – immortality -

A name, a face and notwithstanding wrinkles -

Oblivious to life's finality -

Like a star departed that still twinkles -

Sensitive sadistic little creatures -

Anything is better than alone -

Self-observing players in the bleachers -

Believe until the final shovel's thrown -

10-2-12

The Chalk Garden

A garden sewn with chalk

Or salt, and verses carved

From the poet's bones

In intricate designs

That stand upon a mantel

Warm, but from the hearth.

The room is big and empty.

The grate's aglow at midnight

In winter. But it's summer

Now. The fire's gone.

6-17-13

 

The Castle

Is anybody ever all that free?

The drawbridge down, the battlements stand high,

And a ghost will exit cross the moat.

Clouds appear, the dark is nigh

And rain incipient. A wooden boat

Floats toward the castle from the sea.

Madmen who have wept no longer cry.

5-27-13

The Carnival

The dreary similarity

Of everything I write,

Like going to the carnival

Every single night

Knowing that the Ferris Wheel

Is shut completely down.

Nothing is as boring as

A repetitious clown.

Should I go back and resurrect

The ones that I did best,

Or leave them in the past to be

Forgotten like the rest?

3-19-13

The Castle

We are living in a castle.

We can hear outside the taunts.

Denying himself anything

Except the things he wants.

7-10-13

If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paper and Kindle.  On Amazon, type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Flies

Saturday

Another day spent half asleep!
I sit by the computer.

No book I want to read except

Some poems I have written -

Not for pleasure, just to judge

Their merit one more time -

Haydn on the stereo

But in another room -

Beautiful – the same ones keep

Repeating – I may change it -

Don't expect a person to

Be kind because you love him -

I was kind but once – no twice -

No three times – this is endless!

I can hear an English teacher

Talking to his class

About my poems – telling them

What I did, what something means,

Or something indicates -

Like in all the criticisms

That I read of Keats -

At Cathexis people worry

How they come across -

How they seem to other people -

I once worried too -

I'm 67 now and I'm

Not worried anymore -

Haydn's big like Mozart,

But I like Haydn better -

There are questions I would like

To ask a therapist -

But one who's not a phony,

And one who won't say,

“Puzzling, isn't it.”
For this he's paid a mint

And went to college!

This is all the shit I got

For – god! How many years! -

Or else they looked disgusted,

Threw a book or yelled at me.

Improve your self-esteem -

Knock off a shrink!

You'll feel really good about yourself.

Love

Deep in the undergrowth of my

Personality

There must be a need for love,

But I have never felt it.

When my grandpa died I cried -

My only loving parent -

And yet I feel no fondness now

Especially for him.

Nor did when he was living. Stillborn,

I was on the earth,

In the way and awkward. Only

I just loved to talk.

My grandpa gave me money, nickels,

Pennies, dimes and quarters,

And inexpensive presents. These were

All I really loved.

I felt obscene and guilty taking

Money from my grandpa,

And daddy called me bad.

Eleven dollars in his life.

Some go out and look for love.

To some it simply comes.

Some find it at a party unexpected.

Others sing sad songs and live alone.

 

The South

The values and the morals

Of the patriotic south,

Eulogized on Broadway.

I was there once.

Hypocrisy and bigotry

And Jesus Christ forever -

The hangnail on the Union

And the death of liberty.

 

Simile

No one dresses up today -

America's their house -

I must look like Fauntleroy -

The only praise I got.

How like paper to a fly,

I stick to what he told me -

And my penchant for a simile

Came probably from him.

His were nasty bitter things

Intended to be cruel.

Mine are only poesy.

The last from he who sired me.

Grammar is my nemesis.

“Like he -” “Like him” - I'm baffled.

I aced a course in grammar

In college – and forgot it.

 

On Not Dying

I can't die. And I won't die.

Until I'm recognized

And famous just like Keats -

Or see it in the offing.

God's gift to Keats was typical,

Uncaring and obscene.

He died before he saw success

But in imagination.

And I have four cats – one dying -

Until they die themselves

They'll need water, shelter, food,

Fresh litter, daily love.

I write a hybrid poetry -

A modern cynicism,

Confessionals in simple form -

The form itself passe -

 

Nuskey

Nuskey wasn't crazy said the shrink.

Every feeling whether it was nice,

Fair or just unreasonably selfish,

Nuskey showed. For showing it he paid.

He lived alone and ridiculed my manners

And discomfort. Nuskey was a charm,

Sane or crazy. And he said he was

Like everybody else, waiting to die.

Nuskey has his moment in my book

Whether it is published or forgotten.

Like Nuskey I am waiting – just to die.

But I am writing poems while I do.

 

Flies

I was crazy – most likely insane -

And certainly naïve -

Just before I ran aground

I was stormy, but not the sea -

I was human – a virgin life -

No psychology -

Clinging to the bannister -

Descending endless stairs -

I suddenly slipped and slowly fell

Into a deeper sea -

I grabbed a raft and thrashed around -

Then on a foreign shore

Transactional Analysis -

It is the devil's game -

To confuse and baffle

And tangle darkling minds -

Never again will you know yourself,

Be yourself or feel yourself -

And the words you can't explain

Attach themselves to what you think -

Like flies in an aquarium

That float defunct forever -

To rid my mind of psychology -

Especially TA -

No so much the words, as those who said them -

The edifice collapses in the night!

7-17-13

The Decision

The Decision

Chief Justice Roberts, what do you

Perceive the prime objective

Of the First Amendment

Ought to be?

Not to lessen homicides,

Assault, melee and riots,

Clearly. And efficiency

Would – in the vernacular -

Just make these things less likely.

Not for nine great justices

To weigh in their decision.

But all that their decision should consider.

 

Embarrassment

Sixty-seven years and suddenly

I'm awkward and embarrassed -

Not embarrassment for anything

I ever did, but what I'm doing now,

Which is nothing – sitting in a booth,

Scratching on a pad and drinking tea.

They talk to me. I crumble. What is this?

I was better when I was insane.

And perhaps I wasn't until now.

Ceaseless verses coming out of me

Like drool upon the paper. Let it rain!

I almost do not want to write another.

Sixty-seven years. I never did.

The Laugh

I'm easily embarrassed.

I thought she looked at me.

I didn't understand it

So I gave a little laugh.

She still continued looking.

She did not laugh with me.

I turned a little.

She was looking passed me.

 

Crazy In Denny's

The second day. I went into Denny's,

Took a seat and suddenly I'm crazy -

Silly, mad and selfish -

Foolish and embarrassed -

My mind like roofs of churches is collapsing

At the onslaught of the infidel.

My mother's dead. My father went before her.

Their parents and their siblings – all deceased -

Now I am alone – be born again -

Or take the first one and go on from there -

Go on to where? I'm getting old and older -

I have a friend and maybe he will stay -

Otherwise – there are the ones at Denny's -

They don't talk as much as he and I.

 

Trevor

Trevor – very wacky – long ago -

A wild man – an angry man – and handsome -

Told me once that he was very shy.

Trevor shy? I didn't understand it.

The most outgoing person that I knew.

And his love – an ogre from a swamp -

Very ugly – Trevor was a child -

Not the master of his fate he seemed -

That's a stupid thing to say – but he -

His lover – seemed in charge -

And Trevor stammered -

When he was with him and not at Denny's -

 

In The Daylight

I was in a subway train,

Romantic and passe,

Darkly in a tunnel going

Underneath a bay.

Keats is very beautiful,

And Rupert Brooke, Millay.

Are they read or much less written

Anywhere today?

Finally Rimbaud,

A very ugly beauty. There

Are pimples on the asses

Of the ladies. You may stare.

Keats shaped poetry for years.

Millay and Brooke just wrote.

Rimbaud inspired millions -

The fascination of a goat.

Or the wrestling of two lesbians

That all your reason wrecks -

Neither work nor college

Nor getting old – just sex.

I will not stand in church

With Browning and the cherubim -

And Rimbaud is just disgusting -

And I will not follow him.

 

Middle Brow

Classical enthusiasts
Have sneered at me. They have!

Because I'm drawn to Broadway.

What a lowbrow guy am I!

Bernstein the conductor

Of the New York Philharmonic

Also liked a Broadway show.

He wrote a few himself.

 

Movie Versions

Marilyn was beautiful.

I loved her. But oh my!

Standing in for Channing

In the role of Lorelei

Was an awful blunder.

Having Russell singing Rose

On Broadway in Manhattan

Would cause better shows to close.

 

Harburg

Most of Harburg's lyrics

Are radical and say

Things about the country

That could be said today.

But that is not the end

Of what this lyricist could do.

He deftly bridged the gap between

The beautiful and true.

Without Poetry

The Bad Dog

When I was a boy, the neighbor's children

Had a bad dog fastened to a fence.

They said to stay away. But I approached it,

Knelt and put my face against its muzzle.

Suddenly it bit me in the mouth.

I remembered this and wished to put

It in a poem. In a couple minutes,

It was finished. It was never meant

To draw some similarity to life.

Like Richard Rodgers writing “Bali Ha'i”.

The Lancelot and Christ in my went sour.

I stumbled back and cussed the hateful dog

That all the time kept barking. I went home.

The neighbor's children watched but didn't speak.

Such a fool they must have thought I was.

 

After Leaving Denny's

I am sure that all they thought

Tonight is that I'm very shy

And crazy. Anyway it's true.

Every time they stopped to visit

I could only laugh and smile.

Ordinary gentle people -

It humiliates me to

Be understood -

 

The Party

I wrote the lyrics. No one gave me praise

But he who did the show and several

People from the audience.

A cute and perfect ingenue

Gave a party for the cast

And invited everyone but me.

Not a sullen raging Dostoyevsky,

But a silly ass who imitated

Larry Hart.

They will die. The party's been forgotten.

Larry Hart is dead. Our cat is dying.

They're like everybody else on earth,

Like cats. And they will die despite their god.

What I missed (the party) is a moment

In life's constant endless repetition.

Music, books and poetry will perish,

But rise above the duplicates of life.

There's naught to life but happiness and death.

An English teacher after I am dead

Will analyze this song before a class.

I can hear him now.

 

Going Crazy In Denny's

Not a slight and boyish man,

A love with nothing in his head,

But a smarter man than I,

But doesn't seem to care

For his own intelligence,

An enemy of art.

He wanted nothing but a friend.

That's all I know. That's all I know.

I can't analyze the earth.

I lack the insight and the depth.

I am sick and crazy now.

Admitting people in my life -

The Denny's crew I've known for years.

They must see I'm crazy, sitting

Laughing, smiling while they talk.

Would Shakespeare say, “I'm going crazy”?
An idiom, I'm sitting here,

Sounding depths I can't achieve.

Shakespeare didn't understand

A thing, but made it beautiful.

Winco

Sex and scandal in the supermarket,

Glancing at the magazines in Winco.

A grocery store at 1 a.m. is where

You're very glad they tell you you look straight.

 

Cat Medicine

When you love somebody, then you trust him,

No matter what he does. If you're a cat

That gets its medication twice a day.

You squirm, you writhe, you clamp your jaws shut tight.

And when you've had your squirt of medicine,

You lie and lick your mouth while you are held,

Until you cease to fight, and you relax,

Allow yourself to stay there. You are safe.

And always were. You know that you are loved.

 

Crazy Talent

It does not make you happy to be crazy.

The madness comes and goes. And comes enough

To qualify you for the monthly check,

And the letter sent to certify

The doctor said you're totally disabled

And permanently. It's settled and official.

A few more years you ought to get the money

To live on while you write. Then you will die.

Will your name be known when you are dead?

Or after? Only if the stars are right

And you have the talent that you need.

Though people without talent can go far,

Then die in drugs and shit and be forgotten.

But Stephen Sondheim seems a gentleman.

How to write a poem

2:30 and eight poems have been written

Just this morning, every poem just

As good as any other I have written

In my life – except the early poems.

It isn't difficult to be prolific,

Except the days when all the verse is bad.

How to write a poem. Teach yourself

Or have it in your brain when you were born,

An aptitude for thinking words in rhythm,

Have a big vocabulary, one

That sends the right and necessary word,

And think of something to write verse about.

There's nothing more. Do teachers who teach art

Teach something different or something more?

Like verbal music and a dozen forms.

 

Without Poetry

Without poetry I'd die

Or rupture and explode -

The ocean would

Come gushing out my eyes

And nose and mouth -

My head would float toward the beach

And settle in the sand -

And my cadaver like a craft

Would undirected drift

Upon the sea -

A Feeling Of The Past

What's Poetry?

But not to write about caverns,

Oceans, ghosts and sleep -

Or focus on the phantoms

That through the midnight creep -

Instead describing matters

More adequately whole -

Encompassing the body,

Intelligence and soul.

To summarize a matter

There could but isn't me -

Does Millay want drowning

In a vicious sea?

I think I know a little.

I know I don't know much.

What's in imagination

That out of it I touch.

Is there any beauty

Beyond a furtive glimpse

At angels, gods and fairies,

The forest's rustic nymphs?

A Feeling Of The Past

My world must shrink. My world must shrink.

Outside and in my head.

Not let my sister's reminiscence

Lead me to the past.

Memories and purple feelings

Swim into my mind.

“Oh god!” I shriek inside.

“I must get out!” But I don't leave.

I wait until the party's done,

Then decorously go.

Had I gone at once, the gig

Would have blown completely.

 

An Image

A marble statue with a fissure cracked -

My mother gave me everything I lacked.

It will stand until the horseman falls,

And makes an echo down the hospice halls.

Closer, ever closer to the edge,

Above the sea, a precipice, a ledge,

And water splashes, melts the ancient fane,

And wets the tassels on the stony mane.

It wasn't what she did, though very grim.

Rather it was what I did to him.

Like an ocean or the coming dawn,

Someone, someone to depend upon.

2-21-14

The Poesy

Am I gradually changing?

Did my poesy get good

For a spell, then wither?

God loves a winter rain.

Fifty years of heresy,

Humility and hurt,

The man who would be Shakespeare

Begins to love his verse.

No controversy, diatribe

Or hatred of the earth,

But just a slew of syllables

Together in a phrase.

I'm the captain of my soul.

The man who said that first

Died in an asylum.

And he was a poet too.

 

A Double Bind

Give a villain what he wants

And he'll come back for more.

Decline to give him what he wants,

He'll knock you to the floor.

This situation you would think

Is just what cops are for.

If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  In the search bar at Amazon, type Joseph Hart Poetry.

Cats & Rain

Stars

The universe is furious

Star-made in the sky.

Junkets wasn't curious,

And neither much am I.

Maybe round the Pleiades

Are angels in the night,

And a raft of deities,

Making their own light.

The Lyricist

Working with three gifted men

Who made the cosmos sing,

Rodgers, Bernstein, Jule Styne,

He didn't learn a thing.

He gave the world absurdity,

A pose the country bought.

Genius, talent anyway

Can none of it be taught.

 

Dreams

As appealing as a drunkard's dream

Sleeping in his vomit. Christ redeem

The little shepherd boy upon the knoll,

Also sleeping. As if squeezed from coal,

Every star's a diamond at night,

Shining but not sending any light.

And the ocean is forever heading

To the shore. And as the shepherd's bedding,

Grass beneath an overhanging tree.

The shepherd's dream is fearless poetry.

Dreams & Laughter

When at last you reach the end of laughter,

You realize you're on a mental ward,

All your hopes behind you, and your dream

Awakened. When you're out, you'll have a plan -

To make that wakened dream reality.

Not to grow. You're grown. Not to become.

You already are. But to be happy.

With the facts to savor in the light.

And laughter will come back to you again.

Laughter, love and happiness are life.

Also horror, misery and death.

11-6-12

Cats & Rain

Kittens know. Cats can feel it too.

When you're sad, they make a friend of you.

It's impossible to stay aloof

When the rain is falling on the roof.

It lifts your mood and then it lets you down.

On stalks of grass, the homeless beetles drown.

The click of claws on concrete

Is the only sound

When an old and quiet cat

Follows you around.

And the rain continues dropping on the g

Freedom

Cathexis babies all obey their god.

In obeisance there is liberty.

So go off to war. Sing “Hallelujah!”
Maybe there's some purpose to all this.

No one on god's earth but god knows what.

I hear that she is dead. And every fire

That lit the night is out. The sea is still.

She truly made the moon come down to earth,

The rain to stop, and all that's fake turn real.

And those who did what she did simply laughed.

round.

Imagination

My Home

To have a little home

With someone waiting there

Who doesn't want to leave,

Not for anywhere.

A couple trees in front,

A lawn of grass in back,

Three sleepy playful kittens,

Yellow, striped and black.

No grate, no hearth, no fire -

A kitchen always clean,

The bedroom where we sleep

That's simply never seen.

A postman who is happy

And laughs at all my jokes -

Free for no one visits -

Just a couple folks.

 

What is poetry?

Quotidian reduced

To the vernacular,

What I think of what occurs.

What is poetry?

“The highwayman came riding.”

That's when it began,

And never got beyond it.

Just an urge to write.

Once I seemed to make

What I call poesy.

But god, the effort! And it was

So very long ago.

Now I let it come.

The wheel beneath my palms

Is malleable, wet

And spins. And I write songs.

4-8-13

 

What's Poetry?

But not to write about caverns,

Oceans, ghosts and sleep -

Or focus on the phantoms

That through the midnight creep -

Instead describing matters

More adequately whole -

Encompassing the body,

Intelligence and soul.

To summarize a matter

There could but isn't me -

Does Millay want drowning

In a vicious sea?

I think I know a little.

I know I don't know much.

What's in imagination

That out of it I touch.

Is there any beauty

Beyond a furtive glimpse

At angels, gods and fairies,

The forest's rustic nymphs?

 

Her Poems

A friend wrote a book of poems.

I printed it somehow.

I looked it over. She is dead.

The whole thing's useless now.

Yet in her feeble dreams

Is more imagination

Than in all my barren verse,

Devoid of all sensation.

Every poem of hers I read.

Like their author,

They are dead.

Yet when she was here,

She tried to get them published.

Death is insincere.

 

Imagination

Flat affect and a snake

Coiling round the rhythms -

Does that describe the verse?

I've been writing it for years.

Marvelous phrases and metaphors!

Craggy sensations. The poems were rough

Years ago when I wrote good verse.

The old. The new.

The early. The recent.

At the demarcation

I dropped my pants and blundered.

Buckle them up again.

Imagination – a gift of love -

Unless it goes awry.

What could be the reason

My verses abruptly changed?
In the recent there must be poems,

If one struggles through.

In the old are lots of poems.

More than just a few.

 

Imagination

Don't write about myself.

Possibly the stars.

Don't write about the hobos

Who ride in freight train cars.

Don't write about a thing

That anyone can touch.

Possibly my memories

But never very much.

Here's where Keats began,

Standing in the rain.

I did it long ago

And want it once again.

To use imagination,

Instead of just my brain.

It needn't be a picture.

It better not explain.

 

Image

Another phony poet

Thinking he is great,

Stacking up his papers,

Hoping death will wait

Until he's rich and famous.

Prince of Poetry.

Don't express a word of doubt.

Someone will agree.

9-22-13

 

An Image

A marble statue with a fissure cracked -

My mother gave me everything I lacked.

It will stand until the horseman falls,

And makes an echo down the hospice halls.

Closer, ever closer to the edge,

Above the sea, a precipice, a ledge,

And water splashes, melts the ancient fane,

And wets the tassels on the stony mane.

It wasn't what she did, though very grim.

Rather it was what I did to him.

Like an ocean or the coming dawn,

Someone, someone to depend upon.

2-21-14

 
An Image


The subtle consternation of the sea,
The constant sea that sleepily engulfs
The sodden, deep-sunk posts of wooden piers
Is heaving its involvements to the sand.
The sky is low. Already I can feel
The nearness in an image
Of the deepness of the sea.
I see the sea in human conjuration.
Up from my depth I think the depth
Of oceans.
About the sea - I wonder what there is
About the sea; a magic I can touch
About the sea.

Imagination

Inversions

Upon the surface of the sea

Rides my chosen poetry,

And its lifting clearly tells

The constant movement of the swells

Beneath it. And as if through glass,

I see my life and feelings pass.

This isn't how it ought to be

In Junkets' kind of poetry.

Confession kept completely out,

And all question, thought and doubt.

This seems silly. Yet did he

Write a book of poetry.

 

The Weapon

When someone has my number,

I'm like Diana's fawn.

Anything and everything

I say, he'll get off on.

Wit was made for happy.

Some people hone it well

To skewer like a savage

The weak and give them hell.

And nothing that they say

Is fun or meant to please.

Just a hard rejoinder,

To bring you to your knees.

God

Don't worry into god

Like your mother's cedar chest.

Just do what makes you happy.

No deities will help.

As you quickly age -

The eyes, the legs, the teeth -

You'll wonder if some god

Intended this for you.

The Drunks

4 a.m. in Denny's.

The fools are going strong.

Shouting to be heard

Above the shouting throng.

Is this the Natural Child?
Happy drunks at play.

Little tykes of 45.

What would Jacqui say?

 

Age

It hurts too much to walk

And leaves me out of breath.

The only cure for age

Is death.

I am not as casual

And happy as I seem.

Death and even life

Seem like a dream.

WCW

When you're crazy for art,

It's either brilliant or mad.

Providence looks after drunks

And madmen like a dad.

Drunks will sober up,

But madmen don't get glad.

William Carlos Williams.

I read some, that completes

My tour of modern poetry.

Like a child who eats

Reluctantly his eggplant.

It wasn't reading Keats.

 

Writing

Put a candle in the coffin

And a pen and paper.

Only writing poesy

Gave me any pleasure.

An idea breaks the surface

Of the gloomy sea

And suddenly I'm writing and

I'm happy once again.

Let the angers dissipate.

They're in my stomach now.

Let a happiness inform

The poems I am writing

5-12-13

Rhymes

Fancies dominate my brain,

But I am not like Keats,

Neither images of flowers,

Nor music with its sweets,

Endearing constellations,

Stars where Jesus meets

Saints and fools together

Arriving at the door

Of heaven. Dead so recently

They still can hear the roar

Of the sea below them,

Exploding on the shore.

Bad News

I will give up poems.

I have been an ass,

Writing in the hallway,

Skipping every class.

Passing out my books

Around the neighborhood,

And getting no reactions.

Was I ever good?

I would be embarrassed

If I had a brain.

She said I wrote like Shakespeare,

And that I was mundane.

He said there was an error

In the punctuation.

And that is all he said.

Hardly an ovation.

Imagination

Don't write about myself.

Possibly the stars.

Don't write about the hobos

Who ride in freight train cars.

Don't write about a thing

That anyone can touch.

Possibly my memories

But never very much.

Here's where Keats began,

Standing in the rain.

I did it long ago

And want it once again.

To use imagination,

Instead of just my brain.

It needn't be a picture.

It better not explain.

Nice Poems

Someone I know read a poem I like (one I wrote), it was clear from the look on his face he didn't want to read it, but he did.  His only comment was I'd made a mistake in punctuation.  2 or 3 years ago an ex-English teacher read a lot of my poems, and compared one to Shakespeare.  Then a while ago said my poems were mundane.  I looked it up, it means ordinary.  I looked that up, and it means mediocre.   Apparently my poems are crap, like all poetasters, and I didn't know it, like all poetasters.  I'll keep posting though.  Nothing else to do.

WCW

When you're crazy for art,

It's either brilliant or mad.

Providence looks after drunks

And madmen like a dad.

Drunks will sober up,

But madmen don't get glad.

William Carlos Williams.

I read some, that completes

My tour of modern poetry.

Like a child who eats

Reluctantly his eggplant.

It wasn't reading Keats.

Age

It hurts too much to walk

And leaves me out of breath.

The only cure for age

Is death.

I am not as casual

And happy as I seem.

Death and even life

Seem like a dream.

Nice Poems

Nice poems on safe subjects -

No more NRA,

No more ancient memories

That will not go away.

Pretty songs a little sad -

Life is made that way -

And a guy I want to love

For longer than a day.

Poems that plumb the sea I love,

Acknowledge who I am,

Nothing seems more beautiful

Than Junkets' “La Belle Dame”.

 

Music

Rodgers liked Kern -

His hero worship -

And they were the same -

With Rodgers more substantial -

Kern a little fey -

I like Broadway and opera -

Many years ago

The classical tunes that I recall

I cannot remember -

 

God

Don't worry into god

Like your mother's cedar chest.

Just do what makes you happy.

No deities will help.

As you quickly age -

The eyes, the legs, the teeth -

You'll wonder if some god

Intended this for you.

 

The Weapon

When someone has my number,

I'm like Diana's fawn,
Anything and everything

I say, he'll get off on.

Wit was made for happy.

Some people hone it well

To skewer like a savage

The weak and give them hell.

And nothing that they say

Is fun or meant to please.

Just a hard rejoinder,

To bring you to your knees.