The Defeatist

Regrets

Even those I love dislike my poems.

It lets me know what kind of fool I am.

The kind that since the age of 17

Kept swimming up the river, and got old.

Keats who never needed inspiration

Had a wealth of family and friends,

And wrote them all interminable letters.

I lost a correspondent doing that.

I've been loved, been dumped and have rejected

People in my life. They're gone away.

And now it doesn't matter anymore.

Like Edith Piaf, I have no regrets.

I'll die in Denny's writing on a pad.

Like Keats I'll die believing I have failed.

To hell with god! That such a man as Keats

Be carried through the lych gate thinking that!

 

Goodness

I'd like to think that goodness pays.

Murdoch: “Good for nothing.”
It sometimes pays when good men feel.

Evil has a heart.

Evil wins, and good men die.

Everybody dies!

A glorious ecstasy of death!

What idiots call a “rapture”.

12-1-12

 

Goodness

And as for good. It's what no one can do.

You cannot break the glass or breach the wall

Surrounding everyone. And gratitude

Is the very most you will achieve.

And gratitude like satellites in orbit

Over time decays and falls to earth

Where it is forgotten. If remembered

It's with resentment, petty and obliged.

My Home

To have a little home

With someone waiting there

Who doesn't want to leave,

Not for anywhere.

A couple trees in front,

A lawn of grass in back,

Three sleepy playful kittens,

Yellow, striped and black.

No grate, no hearth, no fire -

A kitchen always clean,

The bedroom where we sleep

That's simply never seen.

A postman who is happy

And laughs at all my jokes -

Free for no one visits -

Just a couple folks.

 

My Letter

My letter to the world which won't write back -

After spending 67 years

Jumping down my throat at every word

You did not like – so what do you expect?

Normalcy and trust? And B.F. Skinner.

The Defeatist

Like Keats who sat and read

The negative reviews,

A priest who gives his love

To a church of empty pews,

A lonely cat that's sick

In the woods at night,

A guru who laments

Nothing in the world is right,

So I fashion poems,

A miserable romance,

Knowing in advance

They do not have a chance.

If you like my poems, I have collections on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  To see them, type Joseph Hart Poetry in Amazon's search bar.

Unknown

Nobody

A malicious psychotic at Denny's

Just will not leave me alone.

She sticks in the knife to the hilt,

Then twists til it scratches a bone.

She looks like a made up cadaver

With a false little bloom in her hair.

She rocks side to side when she's walking.

She's a waitress who'll give you a scare.

A dead disinterred Pollyanna,

Too long above ground she will rot.

She helps with your life or your supper,

Whether you like it or not.

5-26-14

 

Mrs. Dobson & Mrs. Wharton

No one's good. Although some men are bad.

The saintly ones – like widows in their houses -

Live alone and love. Or try to help,

To put a friendly kiss on open wounds

On lonely kids with only hurt at home.

Though gentle when it's done, it doesn't heal

The hurt, the home. But she will be remembered.

Evil doesn't wish to be remembered,

Except to glory in its vanity,

But with no love. Perhaps the bad want love,

But only get it from a sycophant,

Like Wagner with his little lonely king.

Aside from this, the nearest being good

Is doing nothing bad. And rituals

Like empty greetings strangers give each other,

Never knowing who they gave them to.

 

The Kitten

To see a kitten dashing through the rain

And dive among the garbage by a can

For shelter. And you lean and pick him up,

Wrap him in your coat and hurry on.

His little clocklike heart and sodden fur

And tiny warmth inside your coat,

And love has found a home.

End Of The Fourth

The 4^th is over. Finally it's done.

The fireworks that really sound like bombs

And staggered made me jump are finished now.

People crowding people after melons,

Flags on t-shirts, baskets filled with chips,

Buns and beer and hot dogs stand in line.

While from the parking lot and through the doors

Come waves of people, after that another,

As if from the ocean. Ceaseless sea.

The 4^th is over. Nothing but the night.

Facts

Men don't change beliefs because of facts.

They catch the one who brought the information,

Bind him fast and toss him in a pond.

If he drowns, they dredge him up and pray,

And bury him in consecrated ground.

But if he floats they tie him to a post,

And burn him til his ashes fall apart.

Echoes

I reach, I touch, I grasp,

I jerk back quickly.

Nothing's there.

Again I'm only dreaming.

Four cats and each of them has found a place

To sleep if not to sleep on. In the silence,

I'm waking, and I wait to take the car

To Denny's where I may continue sleeping.

Death and life, and sleep and waking – one

Would think they were a true antipodes.

It may come deeper,

May not come at all.

Halls and empty rooms. The ocean rises.

The coming water muffles every sound,

And all the echoes in the hollow castle

Resounding, bounding off the granite walls.

And I'm still dreaming,

Now of ancient things.

Half asleep, but still I cannot wake.

I stretch on the elastic, then recoil

To a sweet uncomfortable sleep

That I cannot get free of, like a glue.

 

The Disappearance

Could the edifice be cracking?

I see alabaster dust

Floating in the sunlight.

It may be so. It must.

The jackal ate the lambkins.

But the lion on the prowl

Will recognize the jackal

With a pained and angry howl.

And the forest will be peaceful

Through a calm and endless night.

Agony is over.

And happiness is right.

 

Unknown

Anyone who writes some poems flaunts them.

I write poems too, but no one wants them.

Will anybody see them when I'm dead?
Will they decay unnoticed and unread?

My life is nearly over, I am still

Like a trolley scaling every hill

In San Francisco where the beauty lay

Among the flower mongers by the bay

In the early dawn, as safely then

As the chicks beneath their mother hen.

The Defeatist

Like Keats who sat and read

The negative reviews,

A priest who gives his love

To a church of empty pews,

A lonely cat that's sick

In the woods at night,

A guru who laments

Nothing in the world is right,

So I fashion poems,

A miserable romance,

Knowing in advance

They do not have a chance.

Possibilities

Money

When Christians come to preach at me,

I simply close the door.

Slowly I'm adjusting

From affluent to poor.

It's happy to have money.

It gives a little thrill.

The question is – tomorrow

Will I have it still?

 

A Poem

A poem is a flower

Behind a sheet of glass.

It's beautiful to look at,

But untouchable alas.

 

A Picture

There's no one here on earth who thinks

My verse is worth a damn.

To my sister it's a hobby.

To him it's just a bore,

A bore I often talk about.

Just that and nothing more.

I will go on writing, try to

Keep it to myself.

As books come from the printer,

Put them on the shelf.

Poesy and failure.

The feeling is intense.

It doesn't look successful,

And it doesn't make good sense.

 

Keats' “La Belle Dame”

They ruined Junkets' poem

As surely as a knife

Stuck into a heart

Terminates a life.

When Keats revised “Belle Dame”

The picture was completed.

They put back the things

Junkets had deleted.

They left it very silly,

Not as Junkets planned.

Pointless little poets,

Very underhand.

Karma

This perhaps is Karma.

She's the absence of all joy.

I really must have been

A bastard as a boy!

 

Possibilities

I see three solutions

To your situation.

Only one will interfere

With your infinite vacation.

The easiest is Welfare.

There are fewer complications,

Which can be confirmed

By all of your relations.

Welfare is accepted.

You can freely flaunt it.

All you have to do

For money is just want it.

The second is the aid

That's given the disabled.

But that takes years to get,

And it isn't all it's fabled.

It barely pays enough

To fill a blind man's cup.

And then there are the symptoms

You have to conjure up.

And last there is the way

Only taken by a jerk

Who's honest. Comb your hair

And simply go to work.

I am very prolific, like Donizetti, Iris Murdoch, Noel Coward and Bach (to name some I know).  But like god said to Stephen Sondheim when he got to heaven (is he dead now?) - "You were very prolific, Mr. Sondheim.  That didn't mean you were worth a damn." 

The keeper of the world

The Kitten

There's pleasure in a cat

To watch him play.

He pounces on a mat

Then runs away.

He backs up very warily,

Then jumps.

He walks the corners charyly

And though somebody bumps

The bookcase he is on

He doesn't fall.

Suddenly he's gone,

And that is all.

Composed While Taking A Dump

Some people live for love

And have a pet.

Others only love

What they can get.

And when the ore is gone,

They take the air.

You think they die alone?

Life's not that fair.

The bad will always get

What it adores.

Just hang on very tight

To what it yours.

Keep it if you can.

Perhaps you can't.

Yesterday a tune,

Today a chant.

Nothing but a god

Goes undefiled.

Look at what they did

To Oscar Wilde.

 

July Third

Winco was packed -

A grocery store.

Flags and melons -

July Four.

To mark the day

The country was born,

More important

Than Christmas morn.

Patriotic -

Might is right.

Bombs and sparklers

Tomorrow night.

Across the country

A single name -

All Americans -

All the same.

And coming out of

A crowded line -

One black man

With a jug of wine.

 

The keeper of the world

The keeper of the world

Can't run his own affairs.

Nor can I.

I f-ck up everything.

I do it unintentionally

Or by going nuts,

By loving too completely,

By loving not enough.

Compassion! I can feel it.

It's difficult to show.

And I was told with emphasis,

“For god's sake, ask a question!”
I don't. I don't know why I don't.

I'm curious as hell.

As well I seldom say what I am thinking.

So the world goes by.

How can I stop it?

Ask for its attention?

Write poems for its praise?

I do not write for praise.
In fact I do.

11-23-12

 

Impossible

Anything is possible

They say.

For instance – every criminal

Will pay.

That's such a silly notion,

And untrue.

What a motherf-cker

Does to you

Will leave you full of hate,

And that's the end.

Far worse is her mistreatment

Of a friend.

Perhaps she'll go.

Impossible for sure

That I will ever give

A damn for her.

The Soldier In Group

The Soldier In Group

A soldier went to war

Where he was horrified and traumatized

And went consequently crazy.

Back home the war was over -

The war is never over -

The army paid for therapy.

He sat there in a group

And listened to the patients

Talk, and saw the therapist

Sit aloof, say nothing.

And the soldier to himself

Wondered what the hell

He did it for.

 

The Fourth Of July

England is wittier.
Paris is prettier.

But the Yankees have the bomb

To top the wit,

Make Paris a pit,

And all with Yankee aplomb.

Death Wish

A Tidbit Of Denny's

A crazy little psycho

With tattoos across his face

Haunts the aisles of Denny's

Like he owned the fucking place.

It's early in the evening.

I came just after 9.

Why must they seat the lesbians

In booths adjoining mine?

There goes psycho number 1,

Making his egress,

The first of many. We are pawns

In nature's game of chess.

And I'll make mine.

It's nearly 10.

The place is getting loud.

People who have nothing are

Inestimably proud.

4-16-14

Phantom Love

Always thinking I'm loved

By people who don't know me,

I don't see the motley world

So easily forgo me.

Or happy to refute

This moment of my youth

Glad to have me with him

While he spits out bits of truth.

I don't live like Proust

In pictures of the past.

I leave that to the devil.

The next succeeds the last.

 

Conceit

At last I am a poet

As though rising from the sea.

These perfectly written pieces

Of music were written by me.

It's an unusual kind of music,

Not in language, but perhaps

In the thoughts and phrases.

Pushing through each lapse

Of talent to the next

Moment of the sea

Drunk by a beautiful angel,

Not blind and deaf like me.

I've always had someone to love -

Only just a friend -

A friend of lust and ambition

To life and to the end.

This verse is very bad,

The rhythm nonexistent.

Still as such it is.

Creation is insistent.

“Creation”! Oh my god!

The poetaster seems

Contented with a talent

That surpasses dreams.

 

The Poor

Starting to discover

As you and wisdom age,

People without means

Will put you in a rage.

Taking what you have

And groping for some more,

As Shaw or Lerner said,

“The undeserving poor.”

Taking what you have

And reaching for the rest,

A little lick of love

From the constant guest.

 

The Wicked

I watch evil constantly

Coming to my house.

Kindness and benevolence

Do nothing to deter it,

But give unhindered freedom

To operate at will.

Evil is an ugly thing,

To see it in the face,

And very often dresses in

A fashion for the part.

More often though it passes without notice.

Then it strikes in smiles,

And your wherewithal is gone.

And if you're kind, forgiving,

Sick or fall in love,

Then you're an endless source to suck.

Mosquitoes by a bog.

 

Death Wish

You absolutely cannot tell a

Person what to,

If he crouched atop a building

And you hollered at him, “Don't!”

There's nothing more reliable

Than carefully written songs,

With all the syllables in place,

And a metaphor.

If he will not do it though

He needs it, then perhaps

He's living in a death wish.

See the people he holds dear.

But do not ask a doctor

Or a social worker what.

They'll pat you on the head and send you

Out again to play.

She's treacherous and greedy

And she plays upon the souls

Whose mothers wished them dead so very

Many years ago.

 

Praise

He gradually sat waiting

For the word that he was good,

And it never came. He finally

Knew it never would.

The Real People

A Two Way

Here is a story of life.

It is a story of Man.

The wife, supplanter, and jilted

Reach agreeable terms.

They talk the jilted out of his rights,

Out of the rules,

Out of his thoughts

And all of his feelings.

He enters another world.

Then the three of them

Amicably

Live together.

The jilted is crazy now,

Wants to be dead.

But without the decision,

Bravery, strength,

He simply cannot do it.

Nor leave. The house is his.

(I think this is close to a plot by Iris Murdoch in a book I think is called "The Severed Head".  But I don't know.  Anyway I like the story.)



A Valentine


Through the eyes of a psychotic
Or a child
Everyone is beautiful and free.
The sea weed on the sand
The ocean piled
Leaves a vague impression of the sea.
The whole unmelancholy smile you smiled
Is more endearing
Since you smiled for me.
I wish that you
Were with me now, and we
Were close together,
But differently.

Thinking

Here is someone who could drown a kitten

And laugh.

Money! Ebb and flow.

I love to see it come,

But I hate to see it go.

I could not drown a kitten.

I can't think it.

Tie a rock around the thing

And sink it.

I dismiss all Christians at the door.

I've begun accepting that I'm poor.

Thanks

Straight shooting, god.

You took a little baby

And mixed it with a gene

Or maybe momma

Or a repetitious family drama

Or a one time once forever trauma -

I don't know, lord,

You knew what to do -

And turned him into death,

Although with every breath

He thinks the neverending world of you.

A View

The old verse is unconscious.

The new verse is aware.

I read no modern poets.

I'm unable to compare.

Maturity is all of life,

Expiring in the tomb.

My poesy is older now

And bursting into bloom.

Every life is bound to earth,

And only death will free us.

My talent isn't music, only

Poems of ideas.

This fact I hate completely.

I have music to the quick.

But rhythms and ideas

Are my only bailiwick.

I want to be a genius

With the freedom of the sea.

I seldom think of phrases

That are much like poetry.

6-20-13

Curious

How I make a book.

I continue like the sea

All night and every morning

Writing poetry,

Until I'm want a book,

Or tired of what I write,

I gather up the pages

And urged to expedite

The making of a book,

I edit the whole thing

With revisions and deletions

And all the hope they bring.

Then format with a title

And send my child away,

Having seen some good in it,

Which I hope will stay.

With such a way of writing,

With no plan or druthers

I don't see how one book

Could be better than the others.

 

The Real People

The Gary Cooper people -

Silent as a tree,

Never saying anything

That's not significant,

And also has complete sincerity.

Noel Coward's out.

And grim sincerity

Takes the place of

Life, society.

Howard Roark walks,

Laughs when it's important,

And doesn't say unnecessary things.

 

The Wicked

I watch evil constantly.

It's living in my house.

Kindness and benevolence

Do nothing to deter it,

But give unhindered freedom

To operate at will.

Evil is an ugly thing,

To see it in the face,

And very often dresses in

A fashion for the part.

More often though it passes without notice.

Then it strikes in smiles,

And your wherewithal is gone.

And if you're kind, forgiving,

Sick or fall in love,

Then you're an endless source to suck.

Mosquitoes by a bog.

 If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon, both paper and Kindle.  To see them, type Joseph Hart Poetry on the Amazon search bar.