Truths

Misgivings

I will only give away or sell

13 books – the good ones – and the first.

The rest of them – like feces – have a smell.

13 books. The others are the worst.

Even things I'm writing while I sit

At night in Denny's – only pass the hour.

Rimbaud and Keats – one by death – both quit.

I didn't die or cease – I just went sour.

But 13 books. I wrote them. They delight.

Though style and sentiment are both passe.

I don't care what other people write.

If all of them are better than Millay,

I'll trade my books at Denny's for cafe.

Suppose I'm right. And those 13 books

Are excellent, as I suppose them so.

If just someone at Denny's ever looks

Inside the covers, who will ever know?

Lines

F-cked from birth. That family!

He never liked to kiss.

The shrink he told that problem to

Said he gave his all to love.

And other sideways sayings

That were no help at all.

But poesy! A raft

That floats upon the ocean

In which people swim.

The sea is very calm tonight.

The ocean's beautiful.

And when I die and in a grave

Say I was no better, only

Able to write poems.

I was not Keats – a bulwark.

Nor gentle like Millay.

Life

I don't want to live. I want to think,

And manage my best notions in a song.

Life has nothing for me. In a song

It's beautiful. But ugliness and death

Some asses like manure shovel out.

The real stuff smells bad enough.

Then verse! Facsimile.

Don't people wish for happiness and love?

Death is hell. And happiness is love.

Age

Is age a horror everyone ignores

Until it's theirs? And death a consummation?
The breaking down of bodies. The regret

When beauty passes that it cannot touch.

Beauty comes in many different guises.

The arrogant and pretty. Affectation!

The love that makes a kind one beautiful.

Truths

I'm writing truths. My, yes! And everyone

Knows some truths. Republicans

Know truths that even Jesus didn't know.

Madmen have some trouble finding truths.

Change

The naïve believe that something's going to change.

It never does. And only god or bombs

Can change the world. In 80 billion years

It only changed from algae to a man.

When a child, I tried to kill myself.

When I woke, my father said, “Don't think

Anything will change.” It never did.

I hadn't thought of change but of demise.

But until I left, my mother said

To my father and to me, “I've got to change him.”
People who are beautiful like you

Sit and think, assimilate and learn

(All done privately, without a sound)

And so change, but do it consciously.

Otherwise they only want a friend.

If you like my poems, I have several collections on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  Type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.  Thanks.