Psych Class

Psych Class

Ordinary students

From a group of something-odd

Were chosen to play warders

In a prison situation.

Another random choosing

Made the other students inmates.

And when they were together,

For a week or 3 or 5,

The jailers had turned brutal.

All just students in a class.

Ordinary students chosen

Randomly from class,

Surreptitiously were spirited

Onto a mental ward.

And a few months later,

Was it months or weeks or days? -

All of them were crazy

And were given diagnoses.

Only Six Books

The first six books - and a couple others

Are the only books I'll ever love.

The other books that number in excess

Of a hundred fill my heart with lead.

They don't make sense, they are not beautiful.

As she who loved me from New Jersey said,

My poems are mundane and cynical,

When she was leaving, she who was a bore.

The weather and the governor of Jersey

Being all that interested her.

Deliver me from old vindictive women,

Who when they don't like you, make you pay.

I have no talent. Had it and it's gone.

But those six books – and a couple others -

Are mild, naïve, with deference to Keats.

All the rest are grown – and fall apart.

But those six books – when I was young and fledgling -

Without friends or family or foes -

Linger in my mind as something good.

Like Goethe I count meters with my fingers

On a lover's back, when I had lovers.

 

From Shakespeare

That someone might have said it,

Might have actually said it,

More things exist – or don't exist -

In heaven or the earth -

The cosmos or infinity -

Than any soul has thought.

Passed the pyramids, the Sphinx,

The Parthenon or Proust -

Certainly passed what Stephan King

Or Sondheim ever dreamed -

And when they are discovered -

Or a godless Armageddon -

As I did believing

I was dying, I will write

Poems – either good or bad -

And irk my counselor -

Or my fan in Jersey -

I'm self-centered and mundane.

Sweet praise and sweet attention!

How she wriggled out of it!

Though other things lie buried

In the darkness of the cosmos -

The blackness of a heaven without gods.

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