The Racist Game

Lines

I could well be dead before it's morning.

My sister and my niece think I'm a jerk.

I have no friends but you and this computer.

I write poems. Rodgers called it work.

I am old and look it. Do I write

Anything the world will want to read?
If this were 1810 I'd rival Shelley.

But it isn't. Art has gone to seed.

My sister's done me favors. And his mother.

Neither of them does them very nice.

They tell me what to do and how to do it

Shrilly. Taking favors has a price.

Euphony and rhythms are my weakness.

My words do not make music. And the beat

Fluxuates and varies. I don't see it.

They won't recite my poems in the street.

She thought I was a clown. She called me brilliant,

Thinking I'd believe her like an arse.

Tossing little bon bons to the sucker.

A pet lamb in a sentimental farce!

The Racist Game

It's the culture, not the color.

And the ones

Who play the racist game.

That is, you must indulge him,

Never criticize,

Or else he'll loudly holler,

“You're a bigot!”

Verse

I am writing poesy again.

But different. Perhaps farewell to Keats.

An empty head containing only flowers.

Words of flowers do not have a scent.

Pretty phrases take the place of pictures.

Or something evil - like the soul of Man.

That was Freud. I don't think men are wicked.

Perhaps I am naïve – at 67.

I think he doesn't like my poesy.

Anyone who ever did is gone.

Can I write verse or do I just pretend to?
It's in my system bursting to be free.

Pictures, phrases – anything at all.

Pretty rhythms, phrases made in heaven.

Not profound, but pleasant to recite.

I'm gradually changing. Ah but Keats!

I shall incorporate the corpse of verse

From long ago in what I write today.

 

Awakening

I no longer like Victoria.

That hearty laugh. I didn't make a joke.

To appease an old man's sense of humor.

Cognizant the old are soon to croak

Christ it's true! An old man's sense of humor!

I simply am not 20 anymore.

Like the cruel defeat of Don Quixote.

I am nothing but a foolish bore.

Larry

I can't believe that he's as old as I am.

He was crazy 40 years ago.

He walked the sidewalk then

As he does now,

Laughing, talking, fiddling with his fingers.

He never wrote a book.

He never went to college.

He never had a job.

His parents may be dead.

And 40 years ago, I thought I loved him.

 

Age

How sad to be an old man without humor

And like my grandpa sit alone and think,

Always there and always like a comfort.

Then you die. And several people miss you.

But to be an old man with a joke.

People tolerate you with a laugh,

But no one thinks you're funny. You're a nuisance.

Oscar Wilde was dead when he was 50.

Every way you try for an egress,

Like a rat who can't escape the maze.

You wonder – Are my poems as banal?
Death's the end. And age is how you get there.

Before you think it, I will say it for you.

As typical as flowers in the spring,

Age without companions or a friend,

Is a homosexual's obsession.

To think about it only makes you older.

Very often you look back and laugh.

In a diner several time a day,

All you have is waitresses who smile.

 

Families

This amorphous entity I loved -

What is love but something that you feel?

In a soft translation in my mind,

Has become a person. He is real.

With his struggle, horrors and vagaries -

His family I hear about, unknown.

Sufficient to the day – the family -

There's nearly naught remaining of my own.

Someone – family – does you a favor -

While doing they're presumptuous and rude.

Although you would be lost without the favor,

You feel incapable of gratitude.

A Conversation Between My Sisters

Reasons

I am not a Freudian.

I do not believe

That everything I do is for a reason.

Well, reason. Yes.

Perhaps a synapse farted.

But not because my mother died

A week ago on Sunday.

 

The Moon

He seems to want to live

On the dark side of the moon.

He seems to love the sinister,

The wicked and the evil.

Though he's been robbed and beaten

By the bad.

That seems to be the venue

Of his mind.

But are the bad contented?
Would they rather they were good?
All of them were babies,

And every baby cries.

Not good, but simply decent

On the light side of the moon.

Salubrious, Endymion.

Life is very short,

Why spend it in an effort

To be dead?

Remembering The Ocean

Tormented. And so young. The waves are breaking.

Ride the surf and glide across the sand.

Let the froth behind you splash like wings

Of a hundred angels in the air.

See the sky. The sky is like the sea,

But far more blue. And clouds like pristine snow

Float at ease across a canvas painted

Only with the color of the sky.

The day is warm. The sandy shore is drifting

In a breeze that blows across the dunes.

No people there. The world is almost empty.

Except for sand and waves and quiet noise.

 

The Man Who Did Good

There was a man who did good things.

Not even strangers were exempt

From his good natured love.

He was beaten. What he owned

Was damaged or else stolen.

Everybody touched his heart.

But only god or Jesus

Was ever touched by him.

Like Noah,

Though it was an ark for one.

They drowned in laughter and the sea.

Evil kept them floating

Until they sank in self-contented love.

They were ugly.

Jesus was ashamed.

The rain did not evaporate.

The oceans stayed forever.

In heaven he met someone who

Like him was love itself.

And he at last was happy.

And on the earth below him,

The only one he hadn't loved

Was the one who loved him.

Of course this is a myth.

Though he is real.

A Conversation Between My Sisters

She's nothing but a brainless Christian bigot!

No gays, no blacks, no Mexicans – just her!

Even now I can't recall her face.

Her daddy and her sister are a blur.

My poesy is just a waste of time -

But if it makes him happy, let him do it.

Tell the fool I really bought his book.

And if he asks, I've almost gotten through it.

He's so afraid of doing something wrong -

Crap on him and watch him lick it off -

We destroyed our kids – like mom and dad did -

Look! We've got him eating from a trough.

A bitch out in New Jersey praised his poems -

Got tired of him, or else somehow he blew it.

He ceased to send her letters. That's not strange.

The strange thing is he took so long to do it.

His feelings and opinions – well, he knows them -

But he'll never speak – he's getting old -

Give him just an ounce of simple courage,

He'd boot our butts right out into the cold!

The Rubber Band

Robin

A loving creature. That's how Jesus meant

The world and all its animals to be.

You're an angel other angels sent.

Be happy. Dreamy sleep is poetry.

 

Robin's Poem

A soft little doggie

All fluffy and white

Sat by a river

And all through the night

He barked at the shadows,

He barked at the stars,

He barked at the river,

He barked at the cars.

He barked and he barked.

Why, this loud little pup

Even barked at the people

His barking woke up.

 

George

A gentle person. And I hope you will

Remain so. For an hour when you wake -

As you admit – you're ready for the kill.

Then rouse with wisdom thirsty souls to slake.

As though a veil were lifted from a tomb,

You rise among the shadows like the sun,

And think and talk and laugh. A mighty bloom

In the garden, and the finest one.

 

Judgmental

What can cops and judges do

To put an end to crime

When day and night the radio

Makes kings of criminals -

And pubescent women sing

Sweetly about drugs?

There's nothing more to say than that -

America's defective -

And set to self-destruct!

 

Dilemma

Sweet songs, I wish I loved you.

Prolific or prolix?
But I only like

The distant books, the six.

I wrote bad verse before them,

And good poems written later.

This terrible insanity

Belongs in a theater.

 

The Rubber Band

Those who do not think about their feelings

Cut a swath from Texas to the sea.

Good and bad like warm and chilly patches

In the ocean, fill my poetry.

Always words, but sometimes images,

Why should I lie kicking in despair

By a rock with miserable demeanor.

That six eclipse the rest? It isn't fair.

I cannot overcome this indecision.

Which is better? Like a rubber band,

I decide, relax. And then the tension

Pulls me back. I don't know where I stand.

My Best Poems

Succumbing now to my delusion -

If in fact it is delusion -

The first six books and several more

Are all the good I ever did,

And plainly I will ever do.

Passive to an angry ocean

Pushing me where I should go.

But those six – and several others -

Remnants of a happy youth

With Keats – though simply juvenilia -

Are the best that I can do -

And all their structures and intentions

Came as well as love from Keats.

Though after Keats came Brooke – intently

However not continuous -

And many many years thereafter

Came Millay – whom I disliked -

Until my brain relaxed and withered,

And gentle pleasures won my heart.

Where is Keats? Perhaps a phantom

In some spectral afterlife

Still indicting – as he once

Averred – his own imagination.

Shall I join him there? I shall not.

Only special people go with

Galt to planets not their own.

Galt who takes to the absurd

The simple truths of Howard Roark.

Psych Class

Psych Class

Ordinary students

From a group of something-odd

Were chosen to play warders

In a prison situation.

Another random choosing

Made the other students inmates.

And when they were together,

For a week or 3 or 5,

The jailers had turned brutal.

All just students in a class.

Ordinary students chosen

Randomly from class,

Surreptitiously were spirited

Onto a mental ward.

And a few months later,

Was it months or weeks or days? -

All of them were crazy

And were given diagnoses.

Only Six Books

The first six books - and a couple others

Are the only books I'll ever love.

The other books that number in excess

Of a hundred fill my heart with lead.

They don't make sense, they are not beautiful.

As she who loved me from New Jersey said,

My poems are mundane and cynical,

When she was leaving, she who was a bore.

The weather and the governor of Jersey

Being all that interested her.

Deliver me from old vindictive women,

Who when they don't like you, make you pay.

I have no talent. Had it and it's gone.

But those six books – and a couple others -

Are mild, naïve, with deference to Keats.

All the rest are grown – and fall apart.

But those six books – when I was young and fledgling -

Without friends or family or foes -

Linger in my mind as something good.

Like Goethe I count meters with my fingers

On a lover's back, when I had lovers.

 

From Shakespeare

That someone might have said it,

Might have actually said it,

More things exist – or don't exist -

In heaven or the earth -

The cosmos or infinity -

Than any soul has thought.

Passed the pyramids, the Sphinx,

The Parthenon or Proust -

Certainly passed what Stephan King

Or Sondheim ever dreamed -

And when they are discovered -

Or a godless Armageddon -

As I did believing

I was dying, I will write

Poems – either good or bad -

And irk my counselor -

Or my fan in Jersey -

I'm self-centered and mundane.

Sweet praise and sweet attention!

How she wriggled out of it!

Though other things lie buried

In the darkness of the cosmos -

The blackness of a heaven without gods.

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

Sal Mineo

Sal Mineo

In the planetarium

He stared up at the stars.

The galaxies were numberless

And terror overtook him.

He fell onto the floor

And crawled beneath his seat,

Crouched, afraid and small,

In the darkness and alone.

9-14-12

Saints

Obama went like Clinton

In a swift decent from glory

To the rubbish heap

Of saints and bigots.

Old saints are not forgotten.

They make speeches and appear

Next to other candidates

For sainthood in ascendance.

Blacks and gays and immigrants

With nothing to depend on

As though they have the mark of Cain,

Listen to their preachers -

Deliverance is nigh.

 

Lost Love

Sometimes when you are talking

I want to say “I love you”.

I don't know what you'll think

Or feel – so I don't say it.

I don't know what you'll say,

So I simply do not say it.

How many loves gone by
Because I did not speak?

Time as well as loves

Went passing by my window

Unknown and then forgotten

Because I was afraid.

And soon I will be dead

And never have been loved

By someone that I loved.

And the dying earth won't know.

And the dying earth won't care.

Ephemeral Art

Art perhaps is beauty

Made from nothing,

And the artist

Goes to nothing,

While the art remains,

And the art as well

Will not remain.

Fools today who call themselves,

And glory in the word,

“Artist” - live for

Money, drugs and fame.

They'll die like anybody else.

Their fame will not outlive them.

Memory

You move into a house

And cease at last to roam.

What they say in the marketplace

May not be so at home.

You don't remember things

Exactly as he does.

Which of you remembers

The thing the way it was?

Alarming to believe,

Alarming and as grim,

The present and the past

Both belong to him.

Yet you can't believe

Elsewhere than in song

The past that you remember
Is anything but wrong.

The structure of your mind,

Foundation of your bliss

Requires what you remember

Be accurate as this.

 

At Sea

Out upon the ocean,

Far from sight of shore,

Many miles from waves,

But wishing for no more

Than a lone companion

In the craft with you,

You suddenly discover

He wishes for it too.

You do not quite believe it.

Then all at once there's land.

And you hesitantly touch

Another human hand.

Saints

Ephemeral Art

Art perhaps is beauty

Made from nothing,

And the artist

Goes to nothing,

While the art remains,

And the art as well

Will not remain.

Fools today who call themselves,

And glory in the word,

“Artist” - live for

Money, drugs and fame,

Will die like anybody else.

Their fame will not outlive them.

 

Saints

The deposed deprived of power

In a swift decent from glory

To the rubbish heap

Of saints and bigots.

Old saints are not forgotten.

They make speeches and appear

Next to other candidates

For sainthood in ascendance.

Blacks and gays and immigrants

With nothing to depend on

As though they have the mark of Cain,

Find shelter. Or go home.

 

The Ugly World

Babes are given goggles

To blind them to the stars.

They grow up without music,

Hear nothing but guitars,

Screaming, loud and ugly.

They exacerbate the scars

With television, violence,

And drugs instead of bars.

Keeping what is beautiful

Pickled in glass jars

On shelves in old museums

With 1920 cars.

Two Deaths

Lost Love

Sometimes when you are talking

I want to say “I love you”.

I don't know what you'll think

Or feel – so I don't say it.

I don't know what you'll say,

So I simply do not say it.

How many loves gone by
Because I did not speak?

Time as well as loves

Went passing by my window

Unknown and then forgotten

Because I was afraid.

And soon I will be dead

And never have been loved

By someone that I loved.

And the dying earth won't know.

And the dying earth won't care.

At Sea

Out upon the ocean,

Far from sight of shore,

Many miles from waves,

But wishing for no more

Than a lone companion

In the craft with you,

You suddenly discover

He wishes for it too.

You do not quite believe it.

Then all at once there's land.

And you hesitantly touch

Another human hand.

Two Deaths

Did Jesus have his angels

Fire a fusillade of lead

At Rodgers and Puccini

To be certain both were dead?

Lungs and jaws and hearts -

Cutting holes in throats -

Cancerous and bloody -

Tossed in different moats.

Each of them wrote music -

Beautiful forever -

God was very thorough -

But not very clever.

Not a single bullet

Removed these men of sound,

But a thousand bullets
Put them in the ground.

Called a god of love -

A pinnacle of gall!

The good do not die young -

But the bad don't die at all.