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?