Contracts

Contracts

Cats do not form contracts

To save each other's feelings.

Their crafts on water blindly sail,

No guilts and no repealings,

And yet aware, indifferent.

However, if they choose,

They'll react. To chase the strings

Loose on someone's shoes.

Did people who enjoy their lives

Indifferent to others'

Wishes have neglectful or

Have very doting mothers?

7-14-13

 

Contracts

Security and certainty and love!

Freedom is for birds that fly in flocks.

Therapists would tell me I am sick,

But oblique and sly, an implication

That only therapists would understand.

Poetry! The refuge of the lone

Who are not lonely in their poetry.

Poetry is joy. And music too.

As it was. Creation has miscarried.

Everyone composes, no one well.

Their songs are loved. Like violence and god.

For no reason. Just because they're there.

8-18-13

 

Doubts

A long time ago when we met

He said (or believed) I was good.

The tide has gone out.

Still I don't doubt

I write poems – or would if I could.

Poems, A Metaphor

Poems are like life.

A stanza stops. It's done.

Followed by another song

Tomorrow.

Soon there are a hundred books

Of poems yesterday,

Forgotten, but in covers

To open once again.

Life

I knew that I was honest

When I thought, “It's George's money.”

I felt it. I was worried. It was his.

She is waiting, ready

To grab some bucks and run

Like she did before.

Such things are done.

A barber in Delano

Who was generous they said

Was murdered. He was 88.

Now he's only dead.

Bruce is our mechanic.

He is good to us and kind.

He trusts us.

But he always looks behind.

 

Wish

I want to be a poet who is read

And remembered after he is dead.

Not because he spat into a sink

Like Bukowski when he took a drink.

Not for burning temples. But because

He is very good at what he does.

I see two books beside me by the cup

Of coffee, and they lift my spirits up.

I know they're good, although I don't know why.

And who is going to see them when I die?

In youth there were sweet stories to be told.

Now I write with meaning for the old.

The bards of love – beautiful and sage

Died early or died old, but didn't age.