Gail

Gail

I just found a poem

Among the books your lover sent me

After you'd departed from the earth,

Or under it.

(Such a life!

You ought to be in heaven.

Compensation.)

I loved you. I was happy.

We had fun for many hours.

Now I have your manuscripts.

I want to have them published.

However for the poem

I just read (about yourself

And your bond with someone

That you loved) -

Underneath the poem you wrote "Joe”.

11-6-13

 

Dreams & Laughter

When at last you reach the end of laughter,

You realize you're on a mental ward,

All your hopes behind you, and your dream

Awakened. When you're out, you'll have a plan -

To make that wakened dream reality.

Not to grow. You're grown. Not to become.

You already are. But to be happy.

With the facts to savor in the light.

And laughter will come back to you again.

Laughter, love and happiness are life.

Also horror, misery and death.

11-6-12

The Duartes lie

The Duartes lie – their raison d'etre -

Like living in an optical illusion,

Or the fun house at a carnival.

Trust them long enough, you'll go insane,

Lose your money, give up all belief.

The Duartes lie. Dislodge yourself

From the reef and drift back out to sea

To where the people are before you die.

11-6-13

To The NRA

To The NRA

I read another man was killed.

The killer used a gun.

Let's notify the NRA

And see what should be done.

Do absolutely nothing.

Every Yankee has the right

To buy and gun and shoot a gun

At everyone in sight.

11-5-13

Good/Bad

Good/Bad

For 50 years I've felt my poems

Bad – no good – no bad.

Grant me now the sweet relief

Of thinking they are good,

Like any poetaster

Who worships what he writes.

It won't make them any worse

Believing that they're good.

11-5-13

A String Of Stanzas

For a constant liar

A man who tells the truth

Is a motherf-cker.

I'm sitting in a booth

With a cup of coffee

In Denny's after 3

On an autumn morning

Writing poesy.

Or so I think I am.

The booth is surely real,

But what I'm calling poesy

Is simply what I feel.

Take the halter off,

Unrestrain the mare,

Neither young nor female,

It would still be there.

11-5-13



Anyone interested in reading a book of my poems can buy them cheap on Amazon and Kindle.  Almost all the print books are $10 or less (at least one is $12.50 because it is very thick), and almost all the Kindle versions are a dollar apiece, a few are $1.50, again because they are bigger.

I recommend "Ten Chaps", "Poems Published in Amazon Magazine", "Endymion Awake", "Keats and the Sea" and (the most accessible) "Motley Chaos".  

My name is Joseph Hart.  And all my books can be found on Amazon by clicking "books" on the drop-down, then typing "Joseph Hart Poetry" in the bar.

Ideas

Ideas

When I was psychotic

With the Furies and the flies,

At each lacunae in the buzz,

I'd relax and say,

“It's over.”

Whereupon it would resume.

I write poems quickly.

Does that mean my verse is bad?
Perhaps if I wrote slowly,

I'd write other than I do.

I can't imagine how,

Or what I'd write.

And I am very weary

As my mother used to say.

Only just the wicked feel that way.

Abandoned by his family,

Forgotten by the world,

He gave his soul for love, but somehow

Never got it back.

God! He was relentless

In his constant accusations.

He divorced his wife and married Keith.

Stravinsky, Berg, Prokofiev,

Ives, a discontented

Fag that turned to Calvin

And married – when he dies,

He'll wing his way to Jesus,

Leaving his cadaver

To fertilize the grave.

And up will sprout his soul

In smelly flowers.

Illusions

A pleasant personality

Does not create a friend,

Nor personable make a paramour.

If you trust a person's smile you're dancing

Phantoms in the parlor,

Where the silver and the glassware are.

11-3-13

An Artist

An Artist

Cat sh-t on the floor and rubbish,

Chapbooks in a sack,

Cezanne and Renoir on the walls,

Artistic, rundown shack.

Artist! That's what people say

When he tries to sing.

He cannot paint, compose or write.

He can't do anything.

But he's an artist. People pay

A grand to hear him – what?

He hauls in many times as much

As a loveless slut.

11-3-13

Wit

Whence my funny comments

Like the phrases in my poems?

Have I become an egotist?
But I can make him laugh.

A laughter that's like heaven,

And I'm sure it's happiness.

But now my wit has gone away.

I didn't have it long.

A portrait etched in misery.

Everybody's game.

11-3-13

George

Jacqui!

How can she write books -

Authoritative books -

On things she doesn't understand at all?
Her degrees! And make a lot of money!

The world's insane!

God bless you, Tristram Shandy!

11-1-13

 

A little bit of knowledge

A little bit of knowledge

Makes a social worker rich.

A little more,

Psychologists retire.

A recreation therapist

Can just afford to live,

But all he has to know is volley ball.

Psychiatrists are very rich

And they can write prescriptions.

One cured me. At least I'm not

Psychotic anymore.

11-1-13

Doing It

What I hoped may be. Alas,

My world's a little off.

Though there's grain to eat and grass,

I'm idle at the trough.

Yet I can shape the flow of words

As though they were the tide,

Dodge the hooves of indifferent herds,

And simply just abide.

Every time I close my eyes

The planet goes awry.

I open them. My breath espies

An empty sky.

11-1-13

 

George

I love you. And I want to be your friend.

You also said you love me. This will end

After you have ceased to live with me,

And tenuous emotions ceased to be.

If I owned the world, I wouldn't share it,

Or all music with guitars to blare it.

I'd gather them and toss them on a heap

Of garbage. And I'd wish you pleasant sleep.

I am crazy. You're a little odd.

You laugh and make my heart believe in god.

When circumstances take you far away,

Tomorrow will be just another day.

11-2-13

Not Paranoid

Not Paranoid

I have been released.

I was just released.

My poems are not fated to be

Mediocre trash.

One man. One ugly,

Heinous little man,

Screamed at me (neck feathers fluffed)

That I was paranoid.

His degree? A recreation

Therapist. That's all.

And I believed him. No one else

Would tell me what I was.

And I read Eric Berne who said

That paranoia is

The exclusive province

Of mediocrity.

And paranoids are very ugly people.

I learned my medication

(From the daughter of a doctor)

Is for bi-polar, not for paranoids.

And a kind psychiatrist

In 1966

Told me then that I was cyclothymic.

So many years. So many goddamned years

I believed that f-cking Leffingwell.

Arrogant. Omniscient. Who dreamed up any answer

To every question he was ever asked.

He went to Jacqui Schiff and came back,

No, not cured, but her.

Instinctively I hated him

Years before we met.

A silly ass! An autocrat!

Today I hate him more.

He's in the ground. He died of AIDS.

Epitome of wisdom.

Unprotected sex.

Who else did this bastard drag along?

I feel my poesy and I

Have just got out of prison.

11-1-13

 

The River

Visalia Community Counseling -

Indifferent, useless farce.

Everyone cares so deeply,

Like my mother's arse.

Less than an hour I found out

I am not paranoid

And never was. Jesus Christ!

That's a cause to shout.

Paranoids, said Eric Berne,

Are mediocre men.

And all my hopes are poesy -

A brain, a pad, a pen.

I figured I was fated,

And all I wrote was trash.

I only wanted excellence.

George can have the cash.

I was told so long ago

That I was cyclothymic.

Trumped by uncredentialed shrinks

That I was schizophrenic.

And paranoid, no less. The fact

That's truest of them all

Is push me any way you like,

And that's the way I fall!

However I kept writing.

Perhaps this heart of wood

In 57 years has written

Something that is good.

And as for diagnoses -

How the unknowing blow! -

I was given one at 20

By someone trained to know.

11-1-13

 

Diagnosis

Diagnoses? I've been given

Two. First by a shrink,

A qualified psychiatrist

Who said I'm cyclothymic.

The second by a little twerp

That all my instincts hated,

A recreation therapist

Who'd gone to Jacqui Schiff.

Sitting on a couch he screamed

That I was paranoid.

He also kissed me on the mouth

When I was unaware.

Paranoid? Well, Eric Berne

(An author I had read)

Said paranoids are mediocre.

I was dead to read it.

I wanted to write poesy.

I wanted to be good.

I hadn't quite forgotten the

Psychiatrist of yore.

Alas the ugly fagot's yell

Rose loud above the storm.

For 40 years I've thought my verse

Was destined to be trash.

Phony and uneducated

Bastard, go to hell.

You loved me.

Then it seems you have a problem.

And possibly the paranoid was you.

11-1-13

 

Disclosure

Believing her intention

Was to drive me crazy

For pretending to be crazy

Around some crazy people,

I went mad, then madder,

And sitting on the psycho ward

Made incoherent noises.

In ignorance! In total ignorance!

Jacqui, you are dead.

But that's what I was thinking.

Now resurrect

And tell me what you did.

11-1-13