Laughing

Lovers

They rise up like a dolphin

Sounding high above the sea!

Then like a sunken ship want nothing
More to do with me.

Most of those who swear their love,

Only love like that.

Some remained reluctantly,

A tire going flat.

I see myself unhidden so

Completely in my verse.

That's my personality.

I couldn't make it worse.

Sadly I'll be this until

The jerk in me is dead,

Very like a few and I
Avoid them with a dread.

The only way to write a song

Is hear it in my head.

The Person

His perfect sensitivity

(She taught him to behave)

Couldn't keep his cold cadaver

From an early grave.

He understood his fellows

Like a kibitzer at chess,

He thought. It really seemed to me

That all he did was guess.

In this book I think I have

Some pieces that are good.

All the rest are effigies

Carved clumsily from wood.

 

Villains

Why do nice people fall in love with villains?

Successive villains lying in a row.

Driven to an early grave or madness.

Another explanation I don't know.

Tell a crook he's crooked and he'll hit you.

Yet it's true. Is virtue just a show?

Christians make a mockery of Jesus.

They locked you up for thinking long ago.

Lines

The world is out of control

And what can anyone do?

A fine for smoking pot,

But here's a gun or two.

Republicans and god

Will make your dreams come true.

Lincoln was republican,

But not at all like you.

Traditions

Since nothing else is truer

Why not try traditions?

Guiding posts to lean on

When no one else is there.

One custom of religion

(Father to the rest)

Is ban the unbeliever

Or anyone who thinks.

 

Laughing

Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde,

Simon, Brooks and Kaufman.

They can make me happy.

A laugh is like a song.

And automatic writing

Is all there is to verse.

From the Muses or from god,

Never mind the poet -

An instrument of nature,

That nature will forget.

Poems

I have got the meter.

The words just fall in place.

But Millay and Keats

Outstrip me in the race.

With neither sense nor feeling,

My poems are a face.

My phrases seem so perfect,

Which isn't quite the case.

My sister will not read them.

In Jersey she is through.

My best friend is impatient.

What would Junkets do?

Even love misplaced is true.

 If you like my poems, you can buy collections of them on Amazon (both paperback and Kindle).  Type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.