When honesty's a symptom

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.

When honesty's a symptom

When honesty's a symptom,

Deceit a way to live,

Only cows like music,

And only kittens give.

When villains pray to Jesus,

And Jesus seems to hear,

The innocent go under,

And love is sex and beer.

Honest people trying

To steer their craft around

Cannot find the rudder

And cry without a sound.

Honest men defeated

By larceny and vice

Never stop believing

That mendicants are nice.

Alas these selfish poems

Whose rhythms ring a bell

Are slowly turning bitter,

And cynical as hell.

Man is getting older

As days keep going by.

Driving in my car,

And I sing songs cry.

That's the path that liars

And criminals are on.

Self-pity is their license

And common sense is gone.