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.