While Listening To "Brigadoon"

The Winner

Babies shriek! It shatters teeth and clears

The sinuses. Mary's Angels. Dears.

I'd had enough. Like a boulder cleft

By noise alone, I shouted “Sh-t!” and left.

The daddy of the baby called a clerk

And asked her, “What's the matter with that jerk?”
She said, “Your child is screaming, and no doubt

He hated it. As anybody would.”

The righteous father gave her such a clout

It knocked her down. Triumphantly he stood.

The Truth

Everybody hates the truth

Which nothing can endear,

Like taking home a couple hundred

Thousand every year.

Should a lonely loser with no

Ego wander by,

A self-appointed shrink will tell him

No one's really shy.

The poems that come easy are

A bore when they are done.

The ones I hate to write turn out

An awful lot of fun.

Triumph

He tried to understand. Endurance

Kept his heart at bay.

But it became a resting place

For those he tried to love.

The others were triumphant

In a game he couldn't play.

Considered idiotic,

He was usually alone.

 

While Listening to “Brigadoon”

The glow of Lowe and Lerner -

Mixing feeling, love and wit -

A happiness that's endless

While the songs are sung.

Everyone on Broadway's good.

That is how they got there,

And this is why they stay,

Except the ones who managed

By wishing on a star.

Music sung by feeling people,

Fantasies and tales.

After Reading Byron

Disinterested verses like the sea

Swallow all in anonymity.

Self-reflecting songs and those who love them

In the pond are lonely shadows of them.

And a combination of them both

Like an imprecation or an oath

Lasts fulfilled until eternity,

Half-lived and half-imagined destiny.

What's the image none but Keats has got?
He made phrases that he hadn't ought.