The Bad Dog

Some Observations & Pidgin French

Kids that scream in Denny's

At 9 o'clock at night

Should be locked in dungeons

With things that crawl and bite.

Women with long hair who sit in booths

In Denny's where they run their fingers through

Their tresses, twist them, wind them, spread them, shake them,

And continue smiling while they do,

With someone sitting eating right beside them,

And both continue talking and they smile.

Always smiling, everybody smiles

In Denny's, it's a place of happy humans.

Suis je pas la plus femme laid

Au Paris? Au monde, madame. - Monsieur,

Merci pour m'ecouter. Je suis beaucoup

Seul.

Other People's Business

He's digging through the garbage eating sh-t.

He has a cart, a puppy dog and cans,

Dirty and unshaven, wearing rags.

Stores have signs in windows wanting help.

Education's practically free,

Or loans to be repaid when you are working.

Still he's digging through the garbage eating sh-t.

I read that people with a PhD

Are digging through the garbage. Why is this?

Do they like it? I will never ask

And I'd better mind my own affairs.

I was told this once. I asked a man

Why Larry Hart liked sex in subway johns.

Paranoids

Paranoids think everyone is bad,

Incompetent and out to make a buck.

Paranoids are absolutely right.

Brains

He has his leeches and impoverished

Whom he thinks are friends. But I have no one.

Him? Perhaps. When he wants to play.

Or people – hardly serious – at Denny's.

I'll be dead but not before I'm famous.

My verse is good. It's got to be. They slyly

Told me I was smart when I was young.

If so I hope intelligence can be

Use for anything, and I chose verse.

Everybody says to write a book,

That poesy is an abandoned art.

It's certainly a mangled and corrupt one,

Simplified til any child could do it

And wouldn't. Children have integrity

Til it's seduced and beaten from their souls,

But try amid their horrors to come back.

 

Doubts

There is a voice of conscience in my brain.

It comments on my actions and my thoughts.

Charlie Raub (a ghoul from long ago)

Asked me were these voices right or wrong.

Is there one in everybody's mind,

Or am I crazy? I can hear the voice

Distinct and clear as anything I say.

And the verse that comes when I am writing -

Is it poesy and is it good?
Or am I deluded and unreal?

He said I am unreal. He shoved aside

With a sneer a poem I had written.

Then some years after read a couple lyrics

I wrote to other people's tunes and was

Ecstatic and demanded they be sung.

This was John, an ugly little tramp

I never liked and don't. Am I as good

At poesy? I am not Larry Hart.

He's my prince. A perfect little man.

Endgame

Countless Christians still keep having babies.

The weather's shot. The polar caps are melting.

America's savant is getting old -

Dyan – is he pulling in the money?

So goes wisdom. Everybody's wise,

But me. Are Keats and Hart to be forgotten?
Music's coming back. But not completely.

Classical and opera are gone.

Guns and horror will not be in vogue

Forever. Or the planet's over with.

And no one writes a poem anymore.

 

Games

Even mom and dad don't give a damn.

Family (that word!) is all that matters.

The cross. The flag. The family physician.

The church here on the corner that declares

Anyone is welcome if he's white.

My sister said that Broadway's turning gay,

And no one cares. She used to. Proust is dead,

And all his memories are just a novel.

Seven volumes. And I read them twice,

And don't remember anything I read.

Little minds! Too busy playing games,

Lying, conning money from the sad,

To read a book or find a selfless love.

Crap! The game America invented,

Not from Eric Berne, but from its soul!

An Aria

My father's smug pomposity! The child

His father loved for doing what he should.

My mother's personality from hell.

She was cute and vicious all in one.

I never thought so much about my parents,

All the threads and where they're coming from,

Attaching to the puppets. Watch them dance!

And Jacqui Schiff. I repressed it all -

Names and faces, everything I heard.

Forget it! Let those memories be gone.

According to one counselor I play

Just one game. I pull back from people.

Unsure and shy, afraid to be rejected.

When was this a game? It goes away.

I've been loved. Will I love again?

But shyness is some kind of affectation.

So thought Leffingwell, and told me so.

The darling extrovert who lived for sex,

And loved his television. This is life?
Not my life. I'd rather sit and dream

In Denny's writing poems. Once I read.

Now where is the ability to read?

My sister may have cancer. And our cat

May be dying too. And so it goes.

A hundred books I've written. Just a few

Are worthy of the name of poesy.

At least I hope there are a few that are,

So like Keats I'll be a memory.

What I write about is academic.

How I write it – that's the thing that matters.

 

Strength

It isn't what I say, it's how I say it.

The subject that I pick will write itself.

Is this how Shakespeare wrote? If written now,

He wouldn't get a dollar for a bus.

A perfect poem takes a manly strength,

Nothing from a woman looking on.

Not the strength that knocks a person down,

But the strength that lifts him up to heaven.

The Bad Dog

When I was a boy, the neighbor's children

Had a bad dog fastened to a fence.

They said to stay away. But I approached it,

Knelt and put my face against its muzzle.

Suddenly it bit me in the mouth.

I remembered this and wished to put

It in a poem. In a couple minutes,

It was finished. It was never meant

To draw some similarity to life.

Like Richard Rodgers writing “Bali Ha'i”.

The Lancelot and Christ in my went sour.

I stumbled back and cussed the hateful dog

That all the time kept barking. I went home.

The neighbor's children watched but didn't speak.

Such a fool they must have thought I was.

I have some collections of poems on Amazon - both paperback and Kindle.  Type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.