On Myself

Pain

He is paid to care. He doesn't.

No one else does either.

When you're ill

They'll leave you on the ice.

Everyone's an infant.

There's no universal mother.

The universe is empty

And the sea is deep and cold.

Any man can stand not being loved.

2-4-14

 

On Myself

See the fool instruct us all

On nature, life and love.

Ridiculous! Who never had a friend -

Although when he was young

Some people tried.

Now he's writing poetry -

Thank god he has a talent! -

Poetry a loser writes

To alienate the world.

Wishing to be published he

Does little to effect

That endeavor.

But he has a friend,

Maybe two.

But this is not success.

See the fool? You heard him say it -

This is not success.

And if he dies at 96 -

Famous or entombed -

It will end a very stupid life.

2-5-14

Pleasure In Art

Life is death with pleasure

Totally dismissed.

When art's devoid of happiness,

It ceases to exist.

Artists list to sinking. From the

Cemetery rose one.

Opera was beautiful

When someone could compose one.

Money, pain and talent!

Only one of these I've known.

With a troubled mind, it's a

Relief to be alone.

2-4-14

 

Disillusion

Most poetry is terrible -

No magic and no charm -

Keats, Millay and Brooke and Poe

Are beautiful to read.

Others like another poet -

What is their intent?

Poetry that has no purpose

But the use of words.

What is art that it should go

Like sewage to the sea?
And suffocate the fishes, only

No one wants to read.

2-4-14

Three Things

A Night In Denny's

Meekness in a booth

Does not get waited on.

Forthright loses jobs.

Ten minutes and she's gone.

Exhibitionism

Proves that love is hot

Underneath a lamp

In the parking lot.

Here I sit in Denny's

Writing poesy

With a cup of coffee

And a glass of tea.

My poesy is new.

I am not a clone.

Sitting here I wish

That I were not alone.

2-3-14

Driving Down Mooney

Silly styles and foolish hats -

Buying guns and drowning cats -

Piercing tongues and colored hair -

Tattoos cover everywhere -

Giving Grammys – is a sham -

The music isn't worth a damn -

Facing death with vanity -

Take a dump – it's poetry! -

Hang the gay, the black, the Jew -

There's really nothing else to do -

Steal a craft and go to sea -

Screw the university -

All the bumper stickers say,

“Expect to go to hell or pray” -

Really makes me want to stay

At home – it's out there every day -

2-3-14

2010

I wrote a tome of verses -

Several hundred pages -

Is it mediocre

Or something for the ages?

The file is being typed.

In a week or two

It will be a book,

Colorful and new.

It was in a box

For several years, and then

I took it out and read it -

“George 2010”.

Thomas said that poems

Must praise the deity.

Mine are on the surface

Of earth and George and me.

Proust is very pretty.

History is not.

I believe the past

Is better left forgot.

Poesy and music

Soothe me like a salve

Helping me forget

The money I don't have.

2-3-14

 

A Tale

My father was tubercular,

Diagnosed at 20,

And couldn't leave his room.

That's all he ever said.

Before that, quite the guy!

Football star and girls,

Starred in all the dramas,

Sang in all the plays.

College was for fun.

Only there a year.

His woman was a beauty.

My mother was a drag.

Did he die alone,

Festering within?
Ten years with his mother

Screwed up his perceptions.

1-3-14

 

Contemporary Life

Colleges say never read the text,

Just the little summaries

After every section.

Policemen beat you bloody

For the law that's on the books

At the time.

And surgeons leave a sponge

In you. And psychiatrists

Prescribe a medication

That's wrong.

Yours is a different diagnosis.

Preachers scr-w the women that are

In their congregations,

Or a prostitute in New York City.

And frigid little women

Worship fathers, dead, perverted,

And long to be accepted by the tribe.

Contemporary life. This country's

Governed by a god,

And the angels on a bumper sticker.

2-3-14

Three Things

Wishy Washy feelings

Easily controlled -

My mother thought it funny.

She's dead and I am old.

Many years ago

Like something out of stock

I tried to be assertive,

Instead went into shock.

In a Jersey hospice

I took the nurse's med,

Dropped into a vertigo,

Woke screaming on a bed.

2-1-14

Several Short Poems

Several Short Poems

“We all lead lives of

Quiet desperation.”

Some of us are

Idiots as well.

Pure Americana.

Success at any cost.

The greyest moth in Christendom,

New England's Robert Frost.

I didn't like Rene

Or anything he stood for.

He was good in bed.

That's all that he was good for.

I dismiss the past.

Don't even take a look.

There's nothing back there for me.

Proust is just a book.

If you're feeling crazy

And don't know what to do,

Be careful lest the doctor

Is crazier than you.

Remember you moved mountains

To make me one of yours.

I didn't understand it.

Now I'm facing doors.

I have no rights and no control.

The preacher said I have a soul

That belongs to only me.

When I'm in heaven, I'll be free.

That is what the preacher said.

When I'm in heaven, I'll be dead.

2-2-14

Bossy

You can't tell other people what to do

Even though they're rolling to their death.

Their future's theirs. Their fate's not up to you.

A villain pulls a dagger from its sheath.

In the sea unnoticed swims a shark.

Everybody has a single star.

At Denny's after midnight, when it's dark,

Someone walks the waitress to her car.

2-3-14

A New Phase

67. All the work is done.
All forgotten manuscripts are purged.

Hopefully the lousy verse is gone,

With just the decent poems to be scourged.

A life of struggle without any hope,

Following relentlessly an aim.

Just doing it. Like college. Still I grope.

And Joyce and Frost called poetry a game.

I surface in the rain on a plateau,

And in the sunlight lie beside the sea.

There's nothing that I ever hope to know,

Not even how to write good poetry.

2-3-14

If you like my poems, I have books on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  The paperbacks are usually $10 or less.  The Kindles are usually a $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the drop down, then type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Behind me sits a woman

The Great And Powerful

I do not like Jacqui Schiff

Or anybody like her.

She'll incarcerate you if

It seems you're going strike her.

She's completely self-protective.

That's how it ought to be.

If she drowns or drives you screwy

She'll remain quite free.

1-31-14

 

2010

A poem must transcend when it was written

Or it will drag me back into the past

And all the madness I encountered there.

He has changed. And I have gotten older.

Yet it lives in stone, a Parthenon,

Phrases phrasing what must be forgotten.

I am dead and everyone I know

Or ever knew is gone. What will it matter?
Just the subject of some poesy.

The past is dead. Like semen, milk and blood

Spilt and dried, it's covered under dust.

2-1-14

 

Poems from the heart

Poems from the heart destroy the mind.

Read again, they resurrect the past.

For 67 years I've been alone.

I have never had a good affair.

2-1-14

 

Hyper, anxious, nervous

Hyper, anxious, nervous. I'm not crazy.

I think they're not the same. The past is gone,

And unlike Proust, I will not bring it back.

I just read a splendid book of poems,

Better than what I have written since,

And every word from several years ago.

Who will ever know? The present world

Of art is made by people who don't care.

No one wants to read what I have written.

2-1-14

The Book

Maturity is maudlin.

Youth is like a crystal,

Clean and clear,

A pool. And then the shade

Makes a shadow cross the verdant ground.

No one's made a comment

On the poems that I wrote

Throughout the years

And put into a book.

A “slender volume”,

As the vendors say.

2-1-14

 

Old Poems

I read a book of poems

That I wrote four years ago

About what I was thinking at the time.

And it did me in.

It broke the egg. The yolk was runny.

I slept and I recovered.

Now a trap door spider seals me off.

2-1-14

 

Behind me sits a woman

Behind me sits a woman. She's alone.

Every day, all night, she's often there.

She occupies a booth and sits and sleeps.

They let her. Is she always so alone?
She's very young. She often changes clothes.

She doesn't do a thing. She only sits,

Occasionally eats or drinks some water.

She dresses nicely, and she has a bag.

I sit here too. But I write poesy.

2-1-14

 

Chaos

Christ the chaos! Pulling it together.

My life in tatters never did make sense.

I rush to understand it, get ahead.

In retrospect, it's only poetry.

Only Jesus knows that I'm a genius,

And I do not believe that Jesus was.

Many things are written in a book,

Someone's point of view, imagination,

Make believe, and all of it is fiction.

Writing poetry is very easy.

Going through deciding what is good

To keep is disappointing, arduous.

Time goes by until the task is done

2-1-14

Thugs & Nice People

Relationships

Every day we make each other cry.

Psychotherapists can tell us why.

Preachers gaze with knowledge at the sky.

Maybe you will hit me in the eye.

Cops will come and get you if you try.

Many years ago (that time's gone by)

Love songs brought us close and made us sigh.

Now we think composers only lie.

Sometimes we remember for a moment.

60 years of this, and then we die.

1-29-14

 

Charlie

Gazing down at me from overhead

Like a maggot looking at the dead,

And with a touch of arrogance he said,

“I think you need to find a better friend.”
I rather weakly smiled. Suppose instead

I'd answered, “Yes I do. It's at an end.”
I see the god of misalliance bend.

1-29-14

 

In The Barber Shop

I don't see how Obama got elected.

A nation full of Jesus Freaks,

Homophobes and racists,

And not a brain among them.

And the barber,

The other one, just got a new tattoo,

Talks in a falsetto like a boy,

Is my age, goes fishing, and tells jokes,

Racist jokes. Obama went to school.

1-29-14

 

Thugs & Nice People

Children are taught to be

Nice by their parents,

Encouraged and loved to be

Thugs by their dads.

“Hit me! Now hit me!”
He laughs to his baby,

Then goes to his woman

To make him some more.

Truth is inherent,

Then twisted, perverted.

Maybe he'll struggle to

Find it again.

And finally think

He has found it in god.

1-29-14

If you like my poems, I have books on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  The paperbacks are usually $10 or less, the Kindles $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the drop down, the type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

To -- Who Thought Of It

Without Poetry

Without poetry I'd die

Or rupture and explode -

The ocean would

Come gushing out my eyes

And nose and mouth -

My head would float toward the beach

And settle in the sand -

And my cadaver like a craft

Would undirected drift

Upon the sea -

 

The Sea

The ocean is an ugly thing.

You drown in its embrace.

From its depths you don't escape

In animal disgrace.

You like a sunken galleon sink

And settle in the silt,

Investigated by the fish,

Eyes closed. Do what thou wilt.

And as the currents carry you

Beneath the sea and far,

You are extinguished like a lamp,

And buried, like a star.

 

The Soldier

He went to Nam.

Jesus! They were proud!

A sniper in the 7^th Infantry.

He killed a lot of gooks

Who were not human,

With no homes, no loves, no families.

When he came back

He hadn't got a wound,

But several decorations. He retired.

As he aged (he never took a job)

He grew slowly taciturn and cold.

At 50 he had ceased to speak a word.

But often in the night he would go mad.

9-21-12

 

Temperate Love

Sleep not in sunlight too intense

Nor in the forest grimly dense

But in the shadow of a tree

With dark, warm, gentle light on thee

And all with no philosophy

But love and sad mortality.

And I shall lie with thee my friend

If thou dost want it til the end

Of daylight. Know the night with me

In sleep and gentle ecstasy.

Our passing thoughts we shall exchange.

No trait in thee will seem more strange

To me than those that are mine own.

And safer love we've never known.

Somewhere a cat

Somewhere a cat

Rubs its side against a fence.

That's sleep.

Cobwebs between doorless jambs

Are doors.

That's the moon.

Dark purple wine

Splashes down the sides

Of a lead mug.

That's the night.

To – Who Thought Of It

Come visit me, my olden love.

Renew and warmly make an

Acquaintanceship in current love

And gently reawaken

Those tender feelings in my heart

That I have not forsaken.

My love requires no design.

It simply can be taken.

The winter's gone, the flowers bloom

Among the matted clover.

Come sit with me and do not say

That yesterday is over.

Be with me as you were, my love,

My ancient love the same.

And lay a flower on my stone

And sit beside my name.

If you like my poems, I have books on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  The paperbacks are usually $10 or less.  And the Kindles usually $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the drop down, and type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.  The poems in this post are in a book called "Old Charms".

Three Stanzas

Three Stanzas

They took what they wanted – plenty -

They took the best of me.

In my mind I'm 20,

But look at the rest of me.

Living alone in a nook

With some cats and a friend.

I have been given the hook,

But I've cats to attend.

Most are aggressive and win,

Or happen to lose some.

For those with a talent for sin,

You've a whole world to choose from.

1-27-14

 

John

This is the story of pauvre John,

Irretrievably gone. He's gone.

Put on this planet to scr-w and know,

Now he goes where the angels go.

Went to Oakland when he was young

To cure his hang-ups. And he was hung.

It did no good. But when he came back

He preached the knowledge the Schiffies lack.

Very nasty and very vain,

He trod the ground of the sugar cane

With his little cloven feet.

Even that didn't make him sweet.

He loved to lie in a daisy chain

In the meadow beside a tarn.

Make a blunder and with disdain

He'd nail you to the old red barn.

1-27-14

 

Rene

Poor baby, storm and strife

Hound his misbegotten life,

His troubled psyche since he was two,

Held together with tape and glue.

In search of a friend, a lover, a wife,

He'll walk the hell all over you.

1-27-14

Values

Her brain was dead

So keep her corpse alive,

Cried the good and holy

Homophobes.

Pot should be illegal,

And we'll damn sure see it is.

It doesn't hurt a thing,

But we don't like it,

So it goes.

You're living in America.

And Christians don't make sense.

If they destroy a million lives,

All that counts is Jesus.

1-27-14

 

Old Age

When people that you love get old

And look like someone else,

It's worse than getting old yourself.

And cats beside the road.

If nature is a mother, she's

Medea. People try,

Some of them, not all of them,

Just very very few.

Like a shadow in a frame

That's coming into focus,

Republicans are wicked men,

Who only love a god.

1-28-14

Home

You gave me a home

I never had,

Filled with the myth

That you are bad.

Poems emerge

From the deadly night.

Skimming the surface

Of life, I write.

1-28-13

 

Games

One needn't be intelligent

To play a crooked game.

Only think what babies think.

Even cats play games.

A little jerk, a little twitch,

Ingenuously smile,

Or wait until the customary

Moment, and then move.

Life is very repetitious,

Practically a bore.

The cards were dealt when earth was formed,

And every card's a joker.

And all the dice are blank.

1-28-14