Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin

People can be beautiful
In several different ways.

And some so ugly you cannot believe

They're allowed to walk around in daylight.

The last of Keats – his phony love of death -

Is ridden from my verse. And I am just

An ordinary poetaster now.

A poetaster! I cannot say poet.

It bothers me. Keats said it easily.

But for angels, god and destiny,

No one but the wicked would be ugly.

But I'm a poet, say the word or not!

Or am I just conceited like the rest?

Berlin was gifted til his final song.

But modern fools consider him passe.

Does that mean he doesn't sound the same?

And Sondheim! Every word he wrote was wrong!

Modern men live only for the present.

Two lesbians in 1968

Were lovers.

One considered me a jerk.

Everything I did and said was wrong.

She said so.

And her lover was my friend.

The Bad Poet

With absolute conceit -

Unbridled and unwarranted -

He posts his poems,

And he praises god,

And wishes his beneficence on all.

He thinks he has ideas.

He can barely think at all.

His poetry is terrible. I told him.

He blessed me, and a friend of his

Considers me a hater.

He put his poems on another site.

Am I as bad as he is?
He clearly feels he's good.

I have been encouraged.

So has he.

 

A Foolish Poem

My verse is good. I'm otherwise insane.

Like the foolish man who posts his poems.

He blesses anyone who says they're bad,

Then posts them on somebody else's site.

Sardonically she said my verse was bad,

Coupled with a smear to my defenses.

Everybody hates somebody else.

So what? When every country on the planet

Is at war, the poems will be lost.

My family (just people I once knew)

And everybody else ate food and f-cked,

Slept and walked and worked and went to church,

But not a one of them wrote poetry.

Let god look after their eternal life.

Longevity's intended for the gods.

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