Irelevant Stanzas

Music

Sixty years of pleasant music,

1900 on,

Made the planet's children happy.

Now the music's gone.

“Turandot” in 1920,

Just like “Sweeney Todd” -

Yet Puccini years before then

Made the world applaud.

The News

They kiss and hug and f-ck on stage.

Now it is an art.

That's what Shostakovitch thought

In 1934.

Historic relics, tombs that once

Connected centuries

Islam finds heretical.

Prophets always win.

Feelings

America's a prison.

This is too unreal.

Jesus Christ and Russia

Go after what you feel.

Islam and the church

Only know what's right.

Stalin led the mob

Into eternal night.

Silly Martin Luther

Who would not kiss the ring

Nailed you for your feelings.

A fundamental thing.

 

Irrelevant Stanzas

He wished to be and thought he would be great.

For a couple centuries he was.

Several songs, not many, such is fate,

With neither love nor pity. What he does

Is lie upon the floor before the grate

Reading verse and writing it. I date.

No one writes this kind of poem today

Nor wishes to nor can. The people pray.

And Verdi and Puccini went away.

They were here so long, but didn't stay.

The public grasps the image – only that,

Rimless glasses, dying young and such,

Personable – neither thin nor fat -

A deity the world can almost touch.

Men are fools! I'd rather have a cat.

People rush to war – marauding ghouls -

Damnit! I am not the same as them.

A bunch of praying bigots til they're dead -

Living by irrevocable rules -

And coaxing one another into bed.

The earth's the setting, music is the gem.

To change my nature, many books I read.

I went to doctors, better to a bar.

Every doctor looked at me and said,

“Yup. That's just exactly what you are.”

Keats

A second Keats. The one who wrote

“To Sleep” and “The Elgin Marbles” -

And the other third rate trash,

Like poets write today.

I want to be the second Keats,

Afraid I am the other.

In either case, I'm neither Keats.

Such beauty in some words!

Was Keats so much in love with death

Imploring in his songs

To die? He did. And gave the crowd

Another sacred image.

If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon - both paperback and Kindle.  To see them, go to Amazon and type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Keats Is Better Read

“The Fountainhead”

The greatest novel written -

Fit for any man

Of any generation

Every place on earth -

Is “Fountainhead”. It's brilliant.

And every element

It needs to tell its story

And all opposing thoughts

Are woven very perfectly,

And right there in the book.

The other, “Atlas Shrugged”,
Has gone a little mad.

 

Keats Is Better Read

They threw him on the floor

And gave him medication,

Locked him in a closet

And kept him there a year.

I was merely scorned

And treated like a beggar,

Bullets through the ventricle,

And damn if you were born.

Parents go to seances

To find their missing children.

Castle-homes in England

Are likely to have ghosts.

Recite Romantic poetry

By grates in rocky chambers,

And it may be beautiful,

But Keats is better read.

Algernon

A man who was retarded

Wrote some very simple songs

That made him very happy.

Then an accident occurred.

He started writing poems

That were different and strange.

It seemed they had been written

By someone else entirely.

When he stopped and read them

(Not immediate to touch)

He considered they were pretty.

When he put the book aside,

He hated them completely

And he didn't understand.

He wanted to return and write

As he had writ before.

The Oyster

There's something in my head.

There's something in my shell.

The pain of doubt and ignorance!

I cannot spit it out.

Nothing but facsimiles

Of some little pearls.

I keep writing poems

Debating what I think.

I love my early poems

Writ when there was Keats.

And the latest poems

That I don't love at all -

Until I read them.

 

Prosody

When you sing don't crap it out.

Writing is unconscious,

But think about it while you write.

Write with supervision.

What ridiculous advice!

Too much thought destroys.

Thinking only shapes the dirt

So poems can come through.

The talent that I think I lost

Is merely separation

From the soul that gives me life.

Reliance on the head.

Poems from unfeeling brains

Lack the metaphors,

Images and similes

And beauty of a poem.

And years ago the songs I wrote

Weren't held up to a light

To verify their accuracy,

But judged by how they felt.

Dead End

Jacqui & Mary Again

I thought she was having me followed.

However whatever occurred,

Her majesty made me psychotic,

And singled me out from the herd.

He hollered to get out of Oakland.

I heard him. However I stayed.

I thought she was somebody's angel,

And for that misjudgment I paid.

And she – both a horror and fickle -

Today I continue to bleed -

I told her the things I was thinking,

And she like my mother agreed.

My journey up north was aborted.

Can such a mission abort?

I asked them for help. And was bested.

Will they win once again in a court?

Possibly one is still living.

I read that the other is dead.

Writing this song resurrected

The terror and thoughts that I fled.

Is this defamation or libel?

How can one libel a sin

That thunders on earth like a lizard?

To say it. Or say it again!

Dead End

For me there was only one issue.

She followed and drove me insane!

The other one crapped. She was vicious.

The treatment of choice must be pain.

Jacqui was homely and heavy.

I thought in my dreams she was square.

That's what I hoped for. She wasn't!

A magician's illusions. Not there.

And Mary! A bitch in long dresses.

That posture! Savant! Like a chippie.

How I remember that sneer.

Long in the tooth for a hippie.

Why did I stay? They were clear.

Attached to them both. Out of fear.

Went up to Oakland sincere.

Carried back home on a bier.

 

Lines

The kindest man I ever knew -

Both that he is and too because he

Means to be. Remember

When we met I said you're like my grandpa -

The only parent that I ever loved.

More demons and more furies

In your head than live in hell -

And more above and wielding their

Beliefs and cruelty,

And making self-concern insanity!

They take the things of nature,

That might otherwise be so,

And weld them to their madness

Then go off to teach the earth.

They grab the heathen's throat,

And break his neck and in so doing

Guarantee his trip to paradise.

This the world condones.

To be a heathen, it does not.

The Categorical Imperative

The Categorical Imperative

Must my soul be socialized

At 67 years?

Twist my heart with iron pliers -

Bend my mind to suit the crowd -

Whoever's at my door?
Love them all because they're nice -

And let them all come in -

I don't want to -

I don't like it -

I have never done it – I've

A rotten attitude.

It makes these good and decent people

All dislike me

When they get to know me better.

Maybe I could pray to Jesus -

Go to shrinks and come out right -

Get married, scr-w and have a son

And pop him off to war -

Bumper stickers on my car -

“Support our troops” and “Army dad” -

And get myself tattooed -

Throw away my Shostakovitch,

Cziffra, Bach, “The Merry Widow” -

And buy lots

Of rock and roll and rap -

And when I die a little less

Than what there would have been will go.

 
 

Oh God!

Did I read that “Sweeney Todd” -

Sondheim's bloody gem -

Was written in the 19^th Century,

And meant to be so ludicrous,

Farfetched and absurd,

That not a child who read it

Would do anything but laugh?

But Sondheim with his watery

And limpid melodies -

None that stays in memory -

Pushed it one step further

And intended it as art.

“Sweeney Todd” - “Sweeney Todd” -

Found that only god and odd

Really rhyme with Sweeney Todd.

So Sondheim the resourceful

Made the medium the message.

Poetry & Music

Composers of another generation

May do their best and try to do the thing

Like Verdi, Donizetti and Puccini,

And though the tunes won't come,

They write the notes,

Print and have them sung to faint applause,

Like desperation from the starving crowds.

So poets shatter Keats and to be new

Try to write and cannot make it good.

Little faces looking up from Shakespeare,

Warily, too frightened to be caught

Reading verses no one else can write.

But Shakespeare was a playwright not a poet,

With lines and phrases no one ever thought.

He'll be bested. Finally he will.

Though in the meantime there'll be no one else.

Why Bother?

Why Bother?

When something as ridiculous

And childish as the “Tea

Party” comes to prominence -

And Sarah Palen too -

Incendiary, brainless -

And once again (for years)

Israel's fighting Palestine -

It's never going to stop -

It's time to quit the planet,

And put away the news.

No longer has the human being

Anything to offer -

Not government or

Or poetry or music.

 

Just A Poem

I can remember my grandpa,

Gentle and loving and old.

He kept me alive for an hour,

But my future was already sold.

My mother, a thing without pity,

Did she know I could see that she knew

Things that outstripped my awareness?
Now she's dead. And her knowledge is through.

That she wolf did far too much planning

To bring her three children up right.

I still hear her shriek, “I will change him!”
Like a knife in the bosom of night.

I did not sleep

I did not sleep


I did not sleep all night.
I may not sleep all day.
He and I had fun,
And now he's tucked away.


Perhaps I'll watch a movie
Ingenious by Kerr,
Brightest star in Walter's sky,
And both of us love her.


All my other loves
Were gentle, slight and free,
Ephemeral, and none
As meaningful as he.


6-14-13


Pretty Death


They make death sound so pretty.
As he said of Rupert Brooke,
"A voice is stilled" -
Not dead, not rotting
In the earth forever,
But "stilled".
A quiet pond at eventide.


 10-24-11


The Man


The harlequin's tattoos!
I guess he goes to war.
An isolated man
Just outside the store


Was digging in the garbage.
His trousers were a shred.
He hadn't shaved for several days.
His beard and hair were red.


10-5-13

Those Who Sneer

Pretty Death

They make death sound so pretty -

As he said of Rupert Brooke,

“A voice is stilled” -

Not dead, not rotting

In the earth forever,

But “stilled” -

A quiet pond at eventide.

10-24-11

Those Who Sneer

No Romantic writing on my tomb -

(I shall not have a tomb,

I have no money) -

Just my name – whatever that may be.

Keats was beautiful. And I presume

I'm truth.

The jester told another joke.

Throughout my life I've always been an ass.

I never knew a thing.

But I had friends.

And here's a truth. My friends were not the kind

Who sneer, and therefore did not sneer at me.

And those who are (what did they want with me?)

Sneered until the pain had ceased to hurt.

And I laughed, but did not run away.

And those who sneer – lets go behind the flats

And forage through the props to see

Them sneer at someone else.

They don't. They never do. But those who do

And only sneer at me, have only one

Attitude for me, and that is it.

And I attract them. Take my life from them,

Beginning at my birth. Why must they be

In my life? And stick to me like flies.

And those who do not sneer – a deep relief

Of easing pain – alone it makes me cry -

Simply do not ever sneer at me.

Not Like Keats

Keats diverted me when I was young.

When I was young, I wrote some poetry.

But this is how I write. I am not Keats.

Keats made magic, but not every time.

Though Keats possessed some magic in his soul,

I love to read his personality.

Though I cannot, I'd rather write like Keats.

What is this? Just more Yankee verse,

Flat and uninspired like the rest.

 

Casting off all vestiges of Keats

Casting off all vestiges of Keats,

Naked, what I write is not a joy,

Although it's soothing just to feel it said,

Unaware of what it's going to be

Before I think it, write it on the page.

Is this masturbation? Were it live,

Would it be sex? Or artless narcissism?
Poets who stand gazing at their souls

Until they have forgotten all the world -

Bigots, wars and prudes,

Families and prigs,

And everyone who wishes they were dead -

So the poet loves and loves himself.

That love is not reflected in his songs.

 

They

The monster came. The fool just sat and stared

Like a reptile looking at the sun,

When it isn't strong enough to run.

The monster roared. The reptile didn't move.

Then the monster quieted,

Let grief divert his will.

The monster and the reptile became one.

On earth and under god, they were in love.

 

A Joke

My mother who was really quite pathetic -

Screaming like a naked knife, a banshee

In the black and fulsome graveyard of the night -

And frequently she'd sit alone and cry.

It made me sad

To see my mother sit alone and cry.

Did I love her? There was some attachment.

Imprinting is for chickens.

I wouldn't call it love.

Once she asked my father did he love her.

He answered, “Well I'm here.”

Yeah. So's the toilet.

 

I want to love my poesy

I want to love my poesy

When it's not like Keats.

Once it was like Keats,

I loved it then.

Newly minted pictures,

Phrases out of god,

All interwoven, hung together,

Interlocking words,

Like the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

Stand back and look and see it is a scene.

Keats' MFA

Old Poems

I read a book of poems

That I wrote four years ago

About what I was thinking at the time.

And it did me in.

It broke the egg. The yolk was runny.

I slept and I recovered.

Now a trap door spider seals me off.

2-1-14

Very Old Poems

God

This is the room

Where god once was

And the throne where he did

What any god does.

Here is his scepter.

Here is his bed.

This is the Bible

He nearly read.

In that iron furnace

Inventing a flame

Is a body of people

Without any name.

1964

Death

It comes in the day

When any can see

And yet til it's here

It is all but ignored.

Whatever that was

No longer shall be

Nor ever restored.

1964

Poetry

Loosening the halter,

The stallion takes his head,

To a mighty precipice

He gallops as if led.

A poem takes a moment

Of writing, then it's done.

If good it stands like marble

Forever in the sun.

A walk around the statue

Carved so carefully,

It seems to me to speak.

It's still, like poetry.

A poem is not mute,

A live thing on a pin

On a board of cork.

It will start again.

When the box is broken

The Monarchs venture free,

In fragile awkward flight.

A rainbow poetry.

 

Epiphanies

I saw in San Francisco

A couple little sparrows

Sitting on a bench together

Just inside the park.

“That,” I thought, “is what I want,

To be another sparrow.”

Later on in Hackensack

Passing by a store

Through an open door I looked

And saw a couple people,

Maybe three inside,

Deep in the recesses of the room

Sitting, talking.

“That is what I want,”

I thought. And in a month

I was insane.

I know people. Some of them

Can make me funny. Many people

Can be funny. I am one.

Yet from 50 years ago,

I am not a sparrow.

I do not sit and talk.

Sadly wishful fantasies

Do not foretell the future.

1-9-14

Keats' MFA

The magic phrases Keats was out to score -

Two white swans majestic stately oar

Themselves across the water. I forgot the quote.

Instead of swans, it could have been a boat.

Assiduous he got an MFA.

By reading poems. That's the proper way.

And so found the way great poets wrote.

The key to art is though its poetry.

And the way to learn to write it

Is to see how it was written.

Faced with an acute tenacity,

Keats did not learn laws but poesy.

The Approach

Google, Kindle, Amazon

Tell you how to sell your books,

But I don't want to flaunt myself.

I'd rather be discovered

Like the poets I revere.

Back several hundred years.

 

Love

Love's a word used just too very much.

Now it is a brand of women's clothes.

It is a thing all animals can touch.

What is it? From birth the baby knows.

A Nice World

A Nice World

A world that's real? Or a world that's nice?

Jolly England or Afghanistan?

Iraq which was much happier before.

The trouble is I'm not as good as Keats.

Do I want to be like him? I do.
Human depth, the beauty of a wave

Coming from the sea across a shore.

Everything she wants she gets from him,

Leaving us without. Because she's real.

And had a rotten life. Which made her rotten.

Ask me now. I want a world that's nice.

Life's not long enough to be so real.

Guns are real. And war. And Jacqui Schiff.

But not a phony. There's an in between.

Can nice be real? They're nice to me at Denny's.

And like tonight, I do not have to pay.

Love

Love's a word used just too very much.

Now it is a brand of women's clothes.

It is a thing all animals can touch.

What is it? From birth the baby knows.

On Therapy

He said I was intrusive when I asked

How he paid for treatment. Several things

He said I still remember. Til that woman

Fired him. Does treatment only work

From someone that you like, if he is nice?
If she's vicious (Mary Kelly was),

You may remember, but it doesn't help.

 

Two

Tonight we talked. Very sad at first.

We went to Denny's. All my friends were there.

The java free. We came home and talked

Some more. And all my feelings went away.

It's almost two, and he may be asleep

Very soon. If I sit up til dawn

Writing songs I wish were more like Keats,

I'll be a weary rag when he wakes up.

Forgiveness

I'm forgiving of most any crime,

However coming from a heart of slime,

Which only gets me shot a seventh time.

Let the person change – he never does -

Or seem to be no longer what he was

Or smile and speak – and I relax because

Jesus is my savior. Jesus bled.

In Sunday School, that's what my teachers said.

So went her fantasy – not truth instead.

Clean your window. Cease to see the sky.

Look at cats and flower. We will die.

But interesting things are going by.

A poem is a phrase one tries to clutch,

Images that one can almost touch -

Ideas unimportant, small and such.

I'm sorry that my poems have become pedantic little lectures.  I hate this.  From my first taste of poetry, I knew I didn't like didactic poems. I hope all my poems are not like this.  Shakespeare had the right idea on this.  He said true things, but he didn't lecture or preach.

I'm also sorry that two years posting poems haven't sold any books.  I feel like Rodgers & Hart looking for someone to produce "Dearest Enemy".  Rodgers said they went to all the rich homes and sang the songs.  No one was interested.  After some time of this, Rodgers said they were only providing after dinner entertainment, not auditioning a show.

Claudius

Claudius

I think of things that never even happened

Then in my dream behave as if they're real

And wake up frightened, crazy and alone.

I have been disliked by very few,

And most of those were psychotherapists

And patients who sat bleeding in a group.

Only the unloving play it tough.

No one but my father thought me bad.

A way to hide. A way to be alone.

Lost to Jacqui Schiff and Mary Kelly.

Mary Kelly said I was obnoxious.

And vengeful Jacqui told me I was bad.

But in a world as hideous this,

No one but the good is put to death.

In Texas that means everyone who's black.

It's the culture, not the color of a man.

Stir the embers, watch the flames ignite!

Show me someone fit to be a mother.

Am I dying? I have yet to write

A poem that will keep my name alive.

Except I changed my name. If it survives,

I'll be known by those who never knew me.

Poems written by anonymous.

The verse may live. But I will be unknown.

Whatever

She wants tattoos. So what? It doesn't matter.

All the little puppets dress the same,

Walking in procession to the grave.

Although it was a shock to wake and see

Fifty thousand bodies in the street,

Naked, happy, covered with tattoos.

And the death of poetry and music.

Millay and Junkets ousted by Bukowski,

Hero of the latest generation,

Imitating Charlie. Charlie wrote

A poem that they love, about his toilet

Backing up – paper, sh-t and p-ss

In his bathtub. This replaces Keats?

And the music. There's no music now.

Perhaps a greater loss than poetry.

Picasso dying said he was a clown.

My first hero. He was not a clown.

 

Legends

Confidence and faith? You must be joking.

The world is falling down, and nature wins.

Nature (or your gods) created life

Just the way it is. It sings of love,

Kills its poets, then goes off to war.

Was Turing sent by god to save the island,

And that completed, banished to the grave?

It makes a legend. What about the island

Warrants to be saved? And not for Turing.

The Oscar. And the princes in the Tower.

God the puppet master plans the script,

And all the little puppets play their parts,

All expecting heaven to their tombs,

Believing what they're fathered to believe.

That's it. So make a legend out of that.

Will someone be alive to tell it to?

Jocko

What I do – dissimilar to Keats -

Is heavy-handed. I cannot indite

Butterflies and bowers. Only Keats

Could do it. Boulders plunging in the sea

Is all I write. Jocko writes a song!

A foolish failure in both youth and life,

I'm writing poems, ominous and true,

Mocking people who are doing things,

Things I don't, and will never do.

Telling heroes, don't get out of bed.

Preachers, cops and therapists -

Each of them a fraud!

Trusted and believed. My dying father

Would not hold my hand. My cousin said

I killed my father's father, my escape

And only source of hope since I was born.

And no one in my family believes

My verse has any value. One pretended

She bought my books. My cousin is a fool.

Looks

What you do determines how you look,

Not the shape that nature gave your skull.

Little Larry Hart was beautiful.

Though simply looking at a photograph,

He was a dark and ugly little gnome.

We liked Dick, she said, but everybody

Loved Larry. To have his degree of talent!

On Being Gay

It wasn't hard for me to recognize

That I was gay – no struggle and no doubt,

No self-deception and no indecision.

Never for a moment in my life

Was I something else.

I had a girl – because I liked her brother.

A hateful thing to do. I told my parents.

I don't remember now how they reacted.

My mother called my friends a couple queers.

My father said he'd never talk about it.

I told a counselor I'd told my parents.

In anger he said, “Why did you do that!”
So much for counseling. But I went back.

If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  To see them, type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar on Amazon.

A Glimpse

A Glimpse

Like people? You are positively joking!

She said she was a gofer for her project.

I didn't get a Masters, and she laughed.

Find another hobby. She meant verse.

People have a right to what they feel,

She said. And she meant homophobia.

Not merely hating gays, but making sure

They do not marry. She makes Sarah Palin

Look human. No. She's absolutely human.

Like Hitler and Caligula and Bush.

In her defense of racial prejudice -

Races shouldn't mix. Because it spoils

The beauty of their skins. I never met

Somebody more horrible than she.

Well, I actually have. A thousand times.

Remembering The Ocean

Tormented. And so young. The waves are breaking.

Ride the surf and glide across the sand.

Let the froth behind you splash like wings

Of a hundred angels in the air.

See the sky. The sky is like the sea,

But far more blue. And clouds like pristine snow

Float at ease across a canvas painted

Only with the color of the sky.

The day is warm. The sandy shore is drifting

In a breeze that blows across the dunes.

No people there. The world is almost empty.

Except for sand and waves and quiet noise.

 

A Denny's Regular

Jesus Christ! He's crazy just like me.

Almost every morning he's in Denny's.

He works. And I know where.

He doesn't like me.

I was in his store. He sloughed me off.

Today I saw him talking to himself.

Has he written books

Sequestered in his cloister?
Or music? Does he paint?

Or anything?
Or does he only sit alone at Denny's

Talking to himself? And always will

Til dying interrupts the conversation?

What Matters

Only two things matter. Maybe three

If I include the cats. It's seeing him

Finish school and have a good career

With happiness. And I will say I know him.

And too (with people laughing up their sleeves)

Become a famous poet, just like Keats.

Not just famous. Good at what I do.

Whitman and Bukowski both have fame.

But more than just a madman with a pen.

I finished school. That much I could do.

College only takes a lot of work.

Writing poems takes a lot of talent.

That's why nearly nobody can do it.

 Her

For years you were among

My very favorite people.

At last you broke the rope.

I won't come back again.

Considering your own

Attitude to me -

You hate me like the devil,

Which you believe I am.

I'm nothing more to you

Than a family appendage

That has to be endured.

And also someone smart

You're crazy to compete with.

And triumph when you win.

Isn't that the truth?

Madmen have their eyes.

And anyone who loves

Her dead sadistic parents

With such a blind tenacity

Has got to be insane.

If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindle.  To look at them, type Joseph Hart Poetry on the search bad at Amazon.

Him Alone

Him Alone

Possibly he's sad.

His regular companion

(They came to Denny's often

Together) has been gone.

Clearly he is crazy.

His jerky mannered movements,

Rigid and abrupt

Give his soul away.

The woman who came with him

Is black. They're very quiet.

I usually wondered

Why she wanted him.

His clothing bespeaks money,

So perhaps he has a job.

Perfect and polite,

Some madmen are not foolish.

But no one but a shrink,

If you trust them so completely,

Could tell you what reality

Lies behind his face.

Shakespeare

A play by William Shakespeare

Is an opera in words.

And every touching, memorable

Passage that goes deep,

That all the world can quote

Is like an aria by god.

2-15-14

Shakespeare

Elizabethan diction and complex.

And words. Too many words I do not know

All skewed to beauty, rapt in their completion.

Though I'm not Shakespeare, I can see his truth.

Shakespeare! Who I heard inclined to doubt

He was as good as Marlowe. He was better.

Does every poet, every poetaster

Compare himself to Shakespeare with regret?
First Shakespeare in verbose complexity -

Then on a pond and floating into sight

A passage of rare beauty to remember,

To read and love, understand and cherish.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare understood the world

For centuries to come.

He summoned up its essence

Like a soldier with a drum.

Since the worm of first humanity

Crawled naked on the shore

And left behind the ocean
(Did something go before?),

The feelings and the fantasies,

The angers and the hopes

Became a human being,

One who forages and gropes

Through primeval darkness,

Til he's vanquished to a tomb

Where he lies forever.

And to all that breathe, this doom.

 

An Annoyance

Exactly like a fly or a mosquito

That buzzes round your face

Or whines inside your ear,

But otherwise completely unimportant -

Swatted with a paper.

I have wasted

67 years. I am a fly,

Only an annoyance, but at times

Maddening, that will not go away.

While they're getting rid of tired loves,

Preparing for the next, I'll be alone,

Writing poems no one wants to read.

The expected climax to this poem

Is that in my solitude I'm writing

Songs that please the world til it is gone,

Fielding lies, disposing of my money,

Listening to Sumi Jo and Cziffra,

Music none I know would like to hear -

Gradually becoming more alone.

 

Like Freud's Unconscious

Like Freud's Unconscious, Junkets' “Welcome Sorrow”
Is a poem of antipodes,

Opposites together co-exist.

But they're unconscious. What is that to me?
Falling trees and wonderful

The surface of the sea

That lifts in waves that hit the shore

And boil across the lea

Watering the flowers,

Cheering children as it passes.

And drown the Yankee battle cry

And game, “The land is free!”

 

A Feeling This Morning

Like Keats, today I feel it

And believe it. I

Shall be among the English

Poets when I die.

As for the American,

When I'm put away

Will there be some poets

But Millay?

And would there be a Keats

Without poetic diction

And a huge vocabulary

Putting forth his fiction?

Who but Johnny Keats

Had such magic in his heart?

He did not write like Shakespeare.

The are 40 leagues apart.

Poems can be beautiful.

It only takes a touch

To speak with expression

When you are not saying much.

Good Poems

All my other books are more exciting

Than the one I now consider best.
And what I think is verse like “Isabella”,

“Lamia” “St. Agnes” and The Odes -

That make him famous – or so I suppose -

Are just clumsy stories badly told.

But the chaff he meant to throw away -

“La Belle”, the sonnets and “This living hand”

Shine like fires on the battlements,

Magic from the cave of an old wizard

That I can visit often. They are truly

The beauty at the outset Keats predicted.

Poems like a butterfly on cork

Famous for their beauty are a bore.

Poems from the conscience or the heart

In imagination are not marble,

Thrill, delight and call me back again.

I am not like Keats, though I would be.

Junkets was archaic even then.

Ideas are like little bolts of feeling

That burst when are read like fireworks

At midnight in a summer in July.

So I think of Keats and keep on reading.

Can I not be beautiful like Keats?
Little poems, lyrics said with charm

And magic? Where's the poet with such charm?

In each millennium one may be born.

I've no charm. I'm just a moth defying

Yet another dictum – don't write poems

On poetry. And never write in rhyme.

A Long Day

Immigration

America hates immigrants,

Opera and gays,

Especially the immigrant

Whose wayward, errant ways

Bring him to the beaches

Where the Yankee Christian prays.

The governor of Texas

Is calling out the guard

To see the foreign heathen

Plays in someone else's yard.

The country is hysterical.

The foreigner is there.

But while she's shooting animals

Does Palin really care?

Taste

He crippled my life,

Pavarotti who said

Intelligence has no

Effect upon taste,

Whether one listens to

Classical, Broadway,

Opera, rock

Or whatever it is.

Not that I want to be

Brainy or thought

So, but to think that the

Bullies who stand

With swaggers and smirks

Around Denny's at night

Might be (god help me)

More suited to Bach,

Cziffra or Callas -

But get off on rap.

And I can't consider them

Philistine jerks

And not very bright

While they're taking my cash.

Cziffra

Cziffra was titan – a hero to me -

His brilliant piano erupts like the sea -

He had no charisma – no politician -

Instead just a genius and gifted musician -

 

Keats

To write as well as Keats

Although not similar -

And not a damn bit similar

To anyone I've read.

Not to be like Whitman,

Dickinson or Poe,

Hardly Charles Bukowski -

Or anybody else.

Perhaps if I were English -

Stiff upper lip and shirt -

I could spit on Wilde

Who made the people happy -

And I could jeer at Turing

Who saved the nation's ass.

Junkets studied poetry

(But got no MFA) -

Midwife for his natural

Ability to write.

Were it up to me

No one wrote a poem

But Brooke, Millay and Keats

And also Oscar Wilde.

A Long Day

Bukowski le plus laid

The planet ever had,

Suffered so I read

From an abusive dad.

Preceding him was Ives

Who wrote a lot of crap,

Pretended it was music,

Then died like any chap.

Starting with the Yankee,

Is this how god intends

To crucify the planet,

And thus the story ends?

Like a trillion lemmings

Rushing out to sea,

Is the world embracing

Its own mortality?

Dylan

In A Bad Mood

It's not because I'm mean.

Mean guys in a group

Get lots of understanding

And a bowl of soup.

It's not because I'm evil

Underneath the skin.

I keep the drawbridge up

And nobody gets in.

However I've been loved

Regardless what the shrinks,

Jacqui, Joyce or Carolyn

Or anybody thinks.

Or Mary – the psychologist

Who really laid it on -

Said all I said was “shit” -

I'm very glad she's gone.

Therapists are bastards

And I have had enough.

But he who said I was

“A diamond in the rough”.

Renaissance

Art is dead. It was crushed

Beneath the massive weight

Of monsters who are ugly

When they congregate.

And they took the word

“Artist” - it's a lie -

For their loveless selves.

No tears. They never cry.

Will these artists ever die,

The beautiful come back?

Somewhere by the sea

In a small impoverished shack

A person even now

That no one ever knew

Is dreaming up a vision

Both beautiful and true.

Although the truth can be

A killing in the street,

Rap and war and cops

With impunity who beat.

 

Someone's Observation

Someone said that Porter

Was witty, Hart was clever.

That's the best opinion

I've ever read, but ever.

 

Dylan

When I was a boy,

Everything was new,

But not sterling silver.

It tarnished very quickly.

Everyone it seemed

Was interested more

In what I ought to be,

And less in what I was.

I grew up with Dylan,

Critic of the world

Castigating losers

In something like a tune.

I'm among the losers

He is singing to.

I got off on Dylan

Singing about me.

I never thought him beautiful,

But a playful hate,

Folk songs from the 60s,

Not “Danny Boy” or Kern.

A stupid thing to say -

That Dylan isn't beautiful.

Everybody knows

That beauty is passe.

I too am a critic

From my point of view,

Espousing what I like

And damning all the rest.

Critics

As foolish and absurd

As a Sarah Palin speech

Is a hagiography -

Even one of Keats.

His poem about Egypt

Written to compete

With another poet -

Maybe two – I don't remember -

Announced and praised the winner -

Is a pretty dull affair.

And I am Sarah Palin -

Just as ignorant as she -

Except that I am liberal

And she – well, what is she?

She cries – impeach Obama.

I really have to stop

Reading things on Google.

It's bad for my digestion.

However in the world

That assassinated Keats -

A boy who wrote a poem -

And the same for Sarah Palin -

I'm sure that if my poems

Are worth somebody's time

I'll wait until I'm buried

To have them in the air.

Or Rodgers – his opinion

Of Sondheim – though it's mine

And I'm very glad he said it -

Don't say it please to me.

Working on a show

With Rogers, Sondheim wrote

A lyric. Rodgers read it

And hollered, “This is shit!”

That wasn't very nice,

But I imagine it was true.