Thinking

Thinking

Did Junkets' verse come automatically?
Or did he think and put the beauty there?
What is this thinker thinking up the words

One says or writes? Is it self-creation?

They think the universe is self-creating

Like thinking, talk or writing poesy.

Speak or write. Forgo the origins.

Ask too many questions, you'll go mad.

So believers wish you would believe.

The Muses are a symbol for a truth

That cannot be expressed or understood.

Did Keats do homage to this paradox?

 

Old Men

Some old men sit sadly

With nothing else to say.

Others think they're funny,

And hope that you will stay.

My grandpa was the first,

And I the other way.

 

Conceit in Denny's

I could go on writing

Poems til I die

And ascend immortal

Into an empty sky.

Finally I see

I'm gifted with a pen.

Like Heifetz I am better

Than my fellow men.

They struggle and they flounder

And cannot write a thing.

I cannot please a friend,

But alone I sing.

Often I can see

The poems that I write

Don't make a lot of sense

As a crazy person's might.

Supposing they had sense

When I wrote them then,

Sometimes I do not care

What it may have been.

Although I lack the genius

Of Keats and Larry Hart,

I have twice the talent

Of people twice as smart.

I cry and I opine

No one will ever know.

I am getting old,

And have nowhere to go.

 

Hate Songs

There are some hateful poems

In this little sheaf.

I write as it appears to me.

To read them, a relief.

Was Junkets never angry?
His feelings just a shoal?
Or never hated someone

Walking on his soul?

Nor Larry Hart a patient

Of an iron shrink

Who tells you you're not thinking

What you think you think?

Destiny

Can I write a poem?
Is there talent there?

Grab the dice and throw 'em.

Nature isn't fair.

Nature is unkind,

Unfair – a horrid sh-t!

And no where will I find

A life escaping it.

The Heartfelt Billboard

The Heartfelt Billboard

Driving to the Veterans

(Where I feel so guilty

Listening to veterans

Discussing Viet Nam),

I saw a billboard, “Why do I feel wrong

When they say abortion is my right?”

Really clever Christians thinking

They can really think -

And none of them a dove, just anti-choice

For everyone on earth in everything.

Demagogues! Reagan's biggest word.

I'm not pro-abortion. I'm just

Anti anti-choice.

 

Strange Stanzas

Giving cats their preference

Deciding what they want,

Denying that prerogative

To people.

So he lived if it was living.

Underneath the sea

Huge mollusks opened showing

Mouths of shells.

Now I am hallucinating

Whether I'm alone.

Do I need another pill to

Quieten the sea?

Israel

Israel has an enemy

Since Carter was in office.

And maybe even longer.

Palestine

Striving for its home again.

Jerusalem is Jesus.

Christians in America

Are glad to raise a flag

For Israel,

The monster of deception.

No matter what Jerusalem

Does or doesn't do,

Who it kills or what it says,

Americans will love it.

And the ones grown weary

Of this marathon event,

The deathless war,

Turn off their radios.

Success

Never have I ever thought

Never have I ever thought

That I was loved by anyone.

This can get you hurt more often

Than a simple trust.

Stranded on a silent sea

In the middle, and the swells

Move and roll like breasts and breathing

Underneath the boat.

4-25-13

The Loner

He was half insane.

He went the other half.

They locked him on a mental ward.

Ignored by all the staff,

He sat alone and wondered,

Not making any sound,

Staring at the other

Patients walking round.

They let him out one day.

They didn't keep him long.

He thought, “What am I doing

So hideously wrong?”

He lived this way til death

Dropped the other shoe,

And never was aware

The others thought it too.

 

Success

The cat we thought was dying

I think is coming back.

We gave him medication.

From the very edge of death,

He's gradually recovering.

I think he broke the spell.

The kitten who would tease him

Is provoking him once more.

Fortuity

Fortuity

His greatest poems never went to press

Until he was deceased and in a tomb.

I don't mean the odes. I doubt their goodness.

But some sweet lines that ravish all your senses,

And leave you wishing for an aftermath.

They would all be lost except for

Fortuosity.

Einstein was wrong in one belief.

The god that he imagined

Does play dice,

A gamble but on everyone's behalf,

And no one wins.

Successive little footsteps take you

To a darkling sea

With setbacks and successes

On your way toward the ocean,

Where they're all forgotten

Evermore.

Let me be wrong!

Jung

It came to me as I was undergoing

A modulation. Verses that I made

And hate to read are merely more mature

Than their author. How can that make sense?

Yet just now I shifted in my head

Into another mind as I was reading.

I read my songs with frank sincerity

As I wrote them. Junkets was a child.

Is that to say that beauty is for children?
I think it is. And Jung who was a poet.

What he wrote I do not understand

Nor believe. Except a little thought

That's traveled with me since I was a boy.

My intelligence is in my mind's

Unconsciousness. And usually reacts.

A latent intellect. The poems I hate,

I hate them for their intellect and hate.

I'd rather plunge into a sea of flowers

That I can revel in each time I read.

What I thought has scuttled my new plan -

To go through all the books that I have written

And delete the poems I don't like.

Thinking it's a weed, I'll crush a flower -

A flower to mature

And conscious minds.

Is this fiction I don't understand?
Am I deriving fiction from a fact?

Suffice that at the clapping of two hands,

I shall see some beauty in my songs.

Of course I won't. Praise deflowers me.

 

Cathexis

The way that one survives -

Keeps one's sanity -

Is thinking “they are doing this

To help, they do not mean it.”
Double, double, double!

Two sides of the coin,

The identical same coin;

And on the edge is madness.

Gibberish

The stone in the liquid is sinking,

Not alas into its socket.

No devilish feverish thinking

Helps to propel or to dock it.

Alone it drifts slow in the viscous

Liquid that hasn't a form.

Over the bowl a hibiscus

Conceals the incipient storm.

 

A Vision

Alice in Wonderland. Dylan. The pike.

This is a world the courageous all like.

But I didn't like it. There's nothing to hold

While riding the Ferris Wheel reaching for gold.

Laughter and happiness! Nothing inhibits

The joy of the sailors now hanging from gibbets.

Down in the dungeon or deeper than that

Sleeps the remains of a little black cat.

Something blows sinister though unawares.

The noise of the organ still raucously blares.

Up on the battlements angels are fey.

They leap from the castle and fall in the moat.

Due to their sorcery, all of them float.

But some take the air and fly swiftly away.

A clown with a head full of knowledge that charms

Dies. Death's a vision that nothing disarms.

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

Abe Ravitz

Kitty's Tentative Recovery

We endured the miseries -

The least of which was hell.

A hateful end is all

We thought we'd have to tell.

But the sick one of our cats

At last is getting well.

Kitty's little horror

Has broken – like a spell.

 

From George

I gave up verse by 1998.

It had petered out, and I was done.

I have the remnants and the residue,

And the only books that I had written.

We met in January, 99.

I was struck. And then I went insane,

As though I was a paragon of health

Prior. And again began to write.

Whether good or bad, I've written poems

Since we met, because of and about you.

If I'm ever known, and if I have

Something to be known for, it will be

Because we met in 1999.

9-20-13

An Old Pun

Pain is seldom short.

Of all possible reliefs

Laughter's not exempt.

The Lawyer entered court

Quite without his briefs

And was cited for contempt.

 

Les enfants terribles

When the sermon's finished,

(Quoth she: do as they wilt)

Let's go backstage and see

How the sets are built.

You can pretend to be Mary.

I'll be Peter or John.

We can play in the baptistry.

And the word goes on.

The Rich, Famous Writer

A popular writer for children -

I won't mention his name -

Concocted a series of stories

That brought him a wealth of fame.

His characters loved by millions -

His characters stupid I thought -

He wound up richer than Croesus

From all of the books that were bought.

A woman somewhere in the country

Wrote – words and music and plot -

A show based for kids on his stories.

“May they do it?” she wrote. “They may not!”

 

Abe Ravitz PhD

I would have a Masters

And be teaching in a college.

I love to think and talk about the arts.

But when I picked a mentor

From those you'd think woulds have its

College nestled somewhere in their hearts,

I picked a guy who couldn't type named Ravitz.

What he wrote this verse and my

Career at once completes.

“You obviously know nothing about Keats.”

1-18-14

Elixir

Automatic writing is the truth.

Better than a verse that can't be taught.

In spite of all the beauty he lies dreaming,

Age spots come, arthritis kills the drive.

Painfully he gets himself to Denny's,

Has a cup of coffee, two or three,

Then leaves – again a man of 25.

Waitresses, the coffee and the feel

Of Denny's – pack them safely in a box,

Package them and patent them and sell

Them another cure for getting old.

 

The Key

Like picking bits of undigested food

From piles of feces – gleaning signs of love

From pleasant conversation – this was not

A simile when Williams thought it up -

And there was no comparison to love -

It's a marvel I can think such thoughts -

I am bad at numbers – Einstein

Received an honorary PhD -

I just sit alone and think of phrases -

200 years ago, by candlelight -

I spent my life (did anyone avoid it?)

Listening to unrequited love,

Hopeful love, or love – but that was then

In music – music n'existe plus.

Wishful love inferring loving thoughts -

Like cooling rain to wet a parching heart -

Can this be a part of god's desire?

That some should die of love and some without it?
She takes from good men – gives to those she loves -

Beyond the fundamental rudiments

I know nothing – only what I see.

If he wants a better kind of love,

This is all I have. It isn't in me.

And never was. Even when I try.

I love. I sigh. I laugh and go away.

And no one ever knows that he was loved.

Although too many did and did not care.

And like a very young myopic child,

I rediscover truths about myself -

Redundantly – and put them into poems.

 

Jill

I was writing well

Verse I couldn't sell,

Loving it until

I discovered Jill.

She crammed my skull with praise,

Quite enough to raise

A beggar from the dead,

Like no one ever said.

And I became a crank.

My poesy turned rank,

And even made her scoff.

Then she drove me off.

A year since then, or two,

A lush green beanstalk grew.

I love my verse again.

Praise can do you in.

Well Written

Well written. That is all of poetry.

Everything – the subject of the senses -

And everything that's fanciful or thought -

And memories – sweet poetry itself -

Is there for all and everybody knows it.

Well written is the most that can be done.

For centuries it's beautifully happened.

Not arranging words in funny places -

And silly lines - Arbitrary, random -

Despite the genre's many syllables

Defining and explaining what is done -

Nor all the vehemence the writer shows

Defending what he writes. Or such as I.

 

Abe Ravitz

If this falls into rhythm,

It's not because of me,

Without a clever phrase

To make it poetry.

A graduate whose major

Was humanities,

I chose my classes, loved them,

My grades were As and Bs.

Assigned to write a paper

On a sonnet, what I wrote

Pleased the teacher totally.

No thing of little note.

I'd been reading Keats

Since I was 21,

I found him deep, enchanting,

A revelation, fun.

I picked him for a thesis

And bought a dozen books

About him, read them all.

Like one of nature's rooks,

I selected for a mentor

An arrogant old man,

The guy who'd liked my sonnet,

Typed and sent my plan.

He refused completely.

One of life's defeats,

He said in rotten typing,

“You know nothing about Keats.”

Ravitz was his name.

Abe. I cannot wait

Until he's in the hottest hell

Heaven can create.

Modonna with Children in Squalor

Madonna with Children in Squalor

The needs of the mother -

The needs of the children -

The loss of a father -

The rights of them all -

Many in the virulent

War about abortion

And also contraception -

Again they're in the news -

Ignore the things that matter -

And seem unaware they're in

A farce – and bring a gun -

A gun without an effort -

Now it is the law – have they

Exonerated murder?

The mother who is indigent,

Constantly she's f-cking -

And every scr-w a baby -

She has five – with different fathers -

One father stayed – for money, not

Because he wants his child -

Drugs and booze in mother's house

With all of daddy's friends,

And cops and guns and shooting

(As the NRA would have it) -

The mother who is Catholic

Goes every week to church -

But does not go to school

And does not go to work -

And she has several reasons

That serve as her excuses -

Should the kids be taken from

The mother – and adopted -

Sacrilege, unnatural -

Like lesbians and queers.

Or left at home with mother -

As that is what god intended -

When the kids grow up they'll be

Insane – if they aren't now.

Seeking

Jill

I was writing well

Verse I couldn't sell,

Loving it until

I discovered Jill.

She crammed my skull with praise,

Quite enough to raise

A beggar from the dead,

Like no one ever said.

And I became a crank.

My poesy turned rank,

And even made her scoff.

Then she drove me off.

A year since then, or two,

A lush green beanstalk grew.

I love my verse again.

Praise can do you in. 

 

Waking Up

I just woke up crazy,

Groggy, couldn't talk,

Thinking of the one

Who turned my world to chalk,

Got myself to Denny's,

Drank a cup of joe.

Again I am alive.

Why, I do not know.

Three people in a week

Said my verse is good.

How to make it famous,

Like Keats, like Proust? Like wood

Turning into marble

On a Grecian shore.

She got it all for nothing,

And now she's after more. 

Lines

I've done bad. But never have I done

So calculating, lizard-like and cold

A thing to anyone. Perhaps she's dead.

My father would full throttle damn to hell

The girl who brought my soul to atheism,

And set me free.

Love

He has a friend. But I'm not good enough.

And another whom he much prefers.

A woman who would crap upon the pope

If it brought a buck. Her facile mouth

Puts out its constant daily wealth of lies

To get her way – and everything she can.

What is love? Attributed to god,

Which they claim that he personifies,

Centerpiece of every family -

God love the misbegotten family! -

Soul of every song preceding Dylan -

 

Hope

There's nothing I can do

But simply hope and let her.

His eyes are good as mine,

And his brain is better.

One day soon perhaps

She'll push it all too far,

And lose my house, his money

And constantly the car.

She never did a thing

For someone to call sweet,

The unpaid loans, the lies,

The meretricious cheat.

 

Seeking

Beware the scary word! She is a liar.

Nothing that she says can be believed.

You knew it all before. Did you forget?

That someone half so dear and smart and pleasant

Would be alone and seriously think

He has to stoop to this to have a friend.

The Woman

I watch him give his money and his heart

To she who's only there to get the money.

A brilliant man who looks in funhouse mirrors

When he sees the people in his life.

Her moves are clear, her gambits and her talk.

Like death I hate her. When she's in a grave,

Maggots can not eat her. She is stone.

Every word she says is utter fiction.

She doesn't care. As sure as god is dead,

This scheming reptile doesn't give a damn.

Ugly as her nature, she is vile.

He asked me to be nice so she will stay.

I try. The ruse is difficult and fey.

He's a quiet man who wishes peace.

I try. This doggerel is my release.