Europe

Europe

I don't like America.

I'd rather live in Europe.

Junkets lived in London

And he went to Rome to die.

Europe lives in beauty

And antiquity. The Yankees

Only live for triumph,

Mother love and god.

Pollock was ridiculous.

America accepts

His silly explanation of

His art as something true.

Bukowski is a hero to

The present generation.

Ugliness is easier than

Beauty to create.

Bukowski, Ives and Pollock

Are a symbol of today

And recently of yesterday.

Tomorrow's gone to hell.

Europe's very beautiful

And old. The air is moist

And cool. The architecture

Is the setting for a stone.

America has presidents

And all of them are liars,

Candy for the people and

New reasons for a war.

Europeans

The buildings and the statues

And the monuments and weather

Are what I like in Europe,

Not especially the people.

The people and the government

Killed Oscar Wilde. And Turing

Saved London from the Nazis

And for that he lost his job.

Britain has its monarchs

And America has Reagan.

The people are as horrible

As anybody else.

Bury me in Europe

In a coffin next to Keats.

I'll never get to England

Nor to England anymore.

But let my art be beautiful

Like Oscar Wilde and Brooke,

And I will live in Europe

In America alone.

Unrewarded Effort

For 50 years or more

I tried to write a poem

As beautiful as Keats.

Was it a success?

It seems the most that happened

Was just my love of Keats

Diminished to a hat full

Of sonnets and some phrases.

And as well I found

Two poets that I love

As much as I had Keats.

I shall not find another.

I doubt I'll be successful.

If Junkets wrote today

I think he would be famous

Another time. My songs

Don't resemble Keats.

Drifting to deep water

I write. Though I would rather

Be happy than be deep.

Vickie

I suppose it gave

Her brainless heart a charge

To put “I scribble verse”

Underneath her book.

My god! Another book!

Like – Sex: An Introduction.

Sex in kindergarten.

It takes the glamor off.

But back to Vickie's note

Underneath her book.

She put, “I scribble verse.”

Quite 19^th Century.

Everything about her

And everything she said

Was several times as phony

As a seven dollar bill.

Petty and vindictive,

Publisher and author,

Praises for “the infamous

Tower of Big Ben” -

 

Shostakovitch. Jazz.

Shostakovitch. Jazz.

Depression overcomes me.

I'm not selling poems,

And everybody tries.

I used to love my early stuff,

Hate most of all the rest.

Now I don't like anything

That I ever wrote.

Once it was a joy

To take my book to Denny's.

Something in the lighting

Made the poems good.

 

Unfinished Stanzas

Winter settles on the earth.

Babies cry, but what's it worth?

Mother's do not give a damn

For kids except, “He's who I am!”

Images – a hippogriff

In a poem on its haunches -

Will mean simply nothing if

They do not mean a thing but conscious.

 

My Neighbor's Taste In Music

Just behind the neighbor's door

Stravinsky was – well, not anymore.

I gave him such a negative cough

The half-deaf neighbor turned him off.

Put on Sowash please instead.

He is quiet, but he's new.

He's dissonant as he was bred

To be, but he writes music too.

A Small Book

When I was a boy

I wished to write a sheaf

Of only several poems,

Perfect poems, brief.

Rupert Brooke and Poe

Had each of them a style

Better for a few

Poems, not a pile.

If I were like them -

With poems one could touch -

Some of them would matter,

And much would be too much.

The Fan

I love Jolson's voice. He only sings

Or does a little dance. And that is all.

And Cantor! I can't listen to him talk.
But when he breaks and dances and he sings,

And claps his hands – my heart belongs to him.

Jolson had a voice that had no rival.

And Cantor was a treasure when he sang.