Not Oscar

My World

In the plastic outer world

Everyone's the same,

But in the sordid inner world

Nobody is tame.

To fade into the crowd

And be forgotten.

Sweet relief!

The people go away.

Sitting in a Russian bar

Looking nondescript,

To see but look at nothing,

Blank, sincere.

Hypnotized and hooked.

What is my persuasion?
I have no persuasion

But lying in a crypt,

With the tides enlocked.

6-7-14

The Revolt Of The Ragmen

They push their stolen grocery carts

With bags and cans and puppies,

And maybe broken hearts

Like downward plunging Yuppies.

They'd attract the lookers

Who'd come to stare, not stay.

Legal, unlike hookers,

And a stench, so kept at bay.

Occasionally a caller

Very proud and gay,

Hands a bum a dollar,

Smiles and drives away.

But no lookers come.

They've ragmen right at home.

Ragmen are endemic,

A patriotic show.

The point of this polemic

Is they finally said, “No.”

They gave up all their stuff,

Which made the country chide them.

To their carts, they cried, “Enough!”

That once identified them.

And on their way to Hades

(The absolute defeat)

They mugged some grey haired ladies

Running down the street.

They hated all the stares,

At being handed dollars,

At traveling in pairs

And sharing dirty collars.

In fact their whole mystique

So picaresque and quaint

The opposite of chic

Would mortify a saint.

The Good Guys

Fiction praises goodness.

The bad guy always wins,

While preachers who are liars

Bless away his sins.

The nazis and Japan

Lost the bloody war.

How many men like pawns

Lay dead in 44?

Not Oscar

Darling, that's a movie.

No one talks like that

Unless they're Oscar Wilde

And that is all they do.

She wept before her lover

Who just stood and stared.

She snapped, “I am not doing this

For your entertainment!”

Witty wry rejoinders

That contain the truth

Don't pass as conversation

Among the common man.