Elizabeth, night mgr at Denny's

Elizabeth, night mgr at Denny's

The pretty woman holds

Two jobs. She doesn't rest.

Another apple hanging on the tree.

And midnight now enfolds

The heathen and the blessed

Where she sat and visited with me.

As beautiful as gold,

Is she educated too?
A good platonic class pervades the air.

She isn't very old.

Improbable the fair

Must do what ordinary people do.

Very like a dream

She walks throughout a sleep

Where sit the bumptious, drunken, loud and vain.

She makes the diner seem

A talisman to keep

When you're alone and standing in the rain.

A Friend

I love you. When you're happy

I love you even more.

And when I'm happy too

I love you most.

 

A Beautiful Song

A beautiful song with the sense of Keats

And a melody of Millay -

The rock-bound brilliant intelligence

Of Rupert Brooke. Can't I

Think of something equivalent

Peculiar to me?

But no! No longer to be myself.

Who then? I do not know.

4-5-13

Yuk

If you want to sell the product,

Say it's “popular”. They'll love it.

Everybody wants to be like

Everybody else.

And say it's an “experience”.

And if you say “extreme”,

And that it will “impact” them,

You'll do better than alright,

In America the cute, the tattooed,

Hetero and white.

 

Little Johnny Honest

Little Johnny Honest

May have only just

Undertaken ways

Of doing that he must.

When it comes to morals

Survival is the trump

To play upon your mother.

Don't play it. Be a chump.

I shall not tell a lie

Unless I'm sorely pressed.

I'll leave some information

Unexpressed.

Keats & Me

Keats had a single vision,

And when the dice were thrown

It brooked no redecision.

Junkets' only seed was sown.

I lack his god (sensation) -

A crystal purpose sweet,

To lay a heart's oblation

At his golden sandaled feet.

Keats was more exciting.

I'm following no should.

I just continued writing

When I found it felt so good.

Fated

I'm not Keats, Millay or Brooke.

I think I am remiss.

You've no need to delve and look

If what you seek is this.

A mediocre poet fated

Just to dusty shelves

With other poets, also dated,

Being just themselves.

Dilemma

I don't want to write

Any songs at all.

Just sit alone and stare

At the shadows on the wall.

But are my poems good?
I really wish I knew.

And asking this aloud

Is not what poetasters do.

I shuffled off the Keats

And then stood up and took

A different kind of poet

From the shelf. Rupert Brooke.