Poesy

Poesy

Chaucer, Spencer, Chatterton

Goaded Keats to strive.

But a poem is asleep

Unless it is alive.

Dickinson said quietly,

“Does my poem breath?”
A rather sad confession,

Or a Christmas wreath.

What do poets aim for?
Have they any goal

Except to write on paper

And say, “This is my soul”?

Others drain the dregs

From a mug from hell.

They break a couple eggs,

Scrambled where the fell.

And me! What am I after?

Groping for some truth?

My thought of verse keeps changing.

And I may have found my youth.

Poesy not brilliant

But with feeling honesty.

Is it good to be resilient

When the truth is poesy?

Yarn

My life is less confused

Since my family is dead.

No more a skein of yarn

Wrapped around my head,

Few places there to peek through.

Now just a single thread.

Infrequently a tangle

from where it led.

Serendipity the string

Gets snagged upon the shed.

Once I sharply snapped it

And continued on instead

Of thrashing in a muddle

Where other hearts have bled.

Publication

My books are self-published.

This truth will not be masked,

Though it doesn't give the glow

If a publisher had asked.

I imagined being published

Among the vineyards on my turf,

A boy in love with Random House

Liked by Bennett Cerf.

 

Non Sequiturs

A situation guaranteed to kill

By the desecration,

Dissolution of the will -

The steady ocean washes

Away the sandy bar

Until there's nothing left

But the dead light of a star.

Am I loved or wanted?
Is it so or not?
A rocky castle's haunted.

And so decays the plot.

I think I am not welcome

In a room with him.

After this will hell come?

A joke! The truth is grim.

Egos

Barrymore's regret

Was that he couldn't sit

Somewhere in the audience

And watch himself perform.

Heifetz said that playing

Better than the rest

Is to know your playing

Is the best.

Shakespeare would admire

My verse. It's in the cards.

My poems are the

Dust of shattered shards.