The Children's Hour

The Children's Hour

Children in a diner

Screaming in a flock -

More loud and mindless noise

Than rap or rock!

Why not tell their father -

A doting smiling dad -

To keep his hellions quiet?
Don't, and wish you had.

Filling every aisle,

They run and wrestle. Are

Their parents deaf and stupid,

Or heading to a bar?

You stand it 20 minutes.

How long can someone shout?

You'd like to call a manager.

Oh hell! You just get out!

 

Jay

Little Jay. Depressive Jay.

Who knew the rules of life.

I yelled at him (what did I say?)

And smashed the gifts he gave me.

And when he left, I was in love,

Or that was my impression.

I began to say it and he

Stopped me and he asked

Did I really want to say that now.

Is unrequited love expressed

Such an embarrassment?

Everybody knows it is.

The only game in town!

I beat him with a heavy club.

He cut me with a blade.

I ripped his shirt. It was a gift.

I yelled at him to die.

But grovel in my guilt beneath

A swamp, a fen, a bog.

Nor will I remember it -

Nothing but my crime.

 

The Illusion

Tiny little mercies

As from a deity

Make me superstitious.

Then it occurs to me -

They were tied to boxes,

Hidden in a shed,

Praying without ceasing.

He shot them in the head.

1-20-13

 

The Illusion

Because they are afraid of death

They thought of an illusion

That tells them it won't happen,

Then put an end to everything

That contradicts the lie,

And run red lights

At every intersection.

12-20-12

The Humanities

I'm an ignoramus.

I know nothing about art -

Poetry or novels,

Statues, music, painting -

Vanquished now by science.

The humanities reborn -

Not bursting through religion

And a wealth of superstition -

But through the calculations

And the compasses and graphs.

A necessary science -

The humanities you love.

The heart without a brain is like

A brain without a heart.

Copeland's common man wants just a

Television set.

10-31-11

The Humanist

Poetical and failing that

Anti-poetical -

Like good and bad – a single coin

In the Catholic church -

Protestant crusaders after

Bad perceive no good -

Two Mormons in their ties on bikes -

Poetry and failing that

Anti-poetry -

Why not let it come like sweat

As natural as breathing?
Imagination taps a vein,

An artery is bleeding -

The body is the human source -

No god made poetry -

4-16-13

The Human Race

When asked about the human race,

This is what to say -

Some are good and some are bad

And some are put away.

Three peas from a single pod -

One goes to hell

And one to god,

And one sits on the windowsill

Looking at the sky.

And no one that I ever met

Knew the reason why.

4-7-13

 

First Stanza Remembered Waking Up

Live to be happy, not to be right.

Then will your verses, bedecked and bedight

With glorious phrases and beautiful things

Glow like a tune that a nightingale sings.

Half in the past and begetting the new,

Writing more poesy,what can I do?

Living alone is a horrible thing,

Although you've a soul that can probably sing.

Believing the verses I recently wrote

Are ugly and bad, like the songs of a goat,

I suddenly feel although some of them are,

Many still shine like the songs from afar.

 

After Reading And Liking Some Recent Poems

Angry cynicism, leave my brain!

Hostile menace in the falling rain!

May my poems be as they were then,

Recently as just 2010.

No longer bad with just a dozen good,

But strangely good with some like chalk and wood.

Be gone you hateful mother of the dead!

Even god almighty never bled

As much for humans as I bled for you.

And the father that I never knew,

Except enough to leave him on the shore,

All his comments muffled by the roar

Of ocean waves that drag him out to sea.

Alone on earth with only poetry,

That from somewhere comes, and I don't know.

Don't let me die uncelebrated though.

Whence the lines that come into my head,

Like the spirit of the speaking dead?