The Rubber Band

Robin

A loving creature. That's how Jesus meant

The world and all its animals to be.

You're an angel other angels sent.

Be happy. Dreamy sleep is poetry.

 

Robin's Poem

A soft little doggie

All fluffy and white

Sat by a river

And all through the night

He barked at the shadows,

He barked at the stars,

He barked at the river,

He barked at the cars.

He barked and he barked.

Why, this loud little pup

Even barked at the people

His barking woke up.

 

George

A gentle person. And I hope you will

Remain so. For an hour when you wake -

As you admit – you're ready for the kill.

Then rouse with wisdom thirsty souls to slake.

As though a veil were lifted from a tomb,

You rise among the shadows like the sun,

And think and talk and laugh. A mighty bloom

In the garden, and the finest one.

 

Judgmental

What can cops and judges do

To put an end to crime

When day and night the radio

Makes kings of criminals -

And pubescent women sing

Sweetly about drugs?

There's nothing more to say than that -

America's defective -

And set to self-destruct!

 

Dilemma

Sweet songs, I wish I loved you.

Prolific or prolix?
But I only like

The distant books, the six.

I wrote bad verse before them,

And good poems written later.

This terrible insanity

Belongs in a theater.

 

The Rubber Band

Those who do not think about their feelings

Cut a swath from Texas to the sea.

Good and bad like warm and chilly patches

In the ocean, fill my poetry.

Always words, but sometimes images,

Why should I lie kicking in despair

By a rock with miserable demeanor.

That six eclipse the rest? It isn't fair.

I cannot overcome this indecision.

Which is better? Like a rubber band,

I decide, relax. And then the tension

Pulls me back. I don't know where I stand.

My Best Poems

Succumbing now to my delusion -

If in fact it is delusion -

The first six books and several more

Are all the good I ever did,

And plainly I will ever do.

Passive to an angry ocean

Pushing me where I should go.

But those six – and several others -

Remnants of a happy youth

With Keats – though simply juvenilia -

Are the best that I can do -

And all their structures and intentions

Came as well as love from Keats.

Though after Keats came Brooke – intently

However not continuous -

And many many years thereafter

Came Millay – whom I disliked -

Until my brain relaxed and withered,

And gentle pleasures won my heart.

Where is Keats? Perhaps a phantom

In some spectral afterlife

Still indicting – as he once

Averred – his own imagination.

Shall I join him there? I shall not.

Only special people go with

Galt to planets not their own.

Galt who takes to the absurd

The simple truths of Howard Roark.