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.