Poems 2
My aphorisms degrade with each reading. My poems remain strong. Which is funny, honestly, I would have thought the opposite. Dedicated, as always, to Mike Borth.
Juvenilia (2019-2058)
Mature Works (posthumous)
The things that no one ever wrote
Needn’t get stuck in your throat.
It is not enough to have the thoughts, but to write them down
The fellowship must be founded so that it may be found—
It’s not enough to write, but also to share
So that other people may gather there.
Sometimes I turn my sound up not to hear
But to intensify that to which I am already endeared
I would love to stay in your arms all day
But unfortunately the world just doesn’t work that way.
No longer abiding distinction
Between sleep and dream
Because life is so fragmented
Or dreams are so mundane
Why do I drink, dear?
Never ponder—
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
I drink
To take life’s ball away
And say
Now, no one can play
This book is boring—
The author takes too long to make his point,
The reader, snoring…
There’s a clog in my throat
And I drink to snake it
But what thirst exists there
No drink can slake it
To describe the pain we feel
And the forces that guide us
We use what’s at hand
And even inside us—
But what kills us isn’t metaphor
It’s an actual virus.
I’m writing to wish you A happy belated. Please don't be agitated— That’s why I leave my cards undated. If after Ramadan Muhammad looks sated— Wish him happy belated. A fire broke out at the Met The audience evacuated. Yelling “Bravo!” at an empty set I wished them all happy belated. It took a thousand years For Rosetta Stone to be translated. Turns out it said, “Happy Belated.” Three days after Jesus died He rose again, but you and I Took three more days to eulogize Wishing Christ a happy belated. There must have been some mistake When I showed up at my friend's wake To my surprise The casket was baby-sized. I checked the invitation once more— It wasn't today, but the day before. I send his folks a card that stated Sorry, and happy belated.
The gyratory curdled cream
Of newly recollected dream—
Vine-stricken leaves of vanity
That coarsely-render sanity
Made double, triple, 'pon a score
More fragrant by a fulsome bore
Into the mist
Of sinking ships
The fog that wrote
“Here lies the boat.”
From it can be understood
To I can understand it
Is a chasm so violent
A map with no ocean
Could scarcely span it
You have turned
My innocence to malice
By an unyielding mind
With comportment of a palace
If rainbows grew outward and instead of a bow
Unfurled themselves up into a cone
With violet first, the pyramid’s point
Then a dais of red like the sky out of joint—
A return to sleep, a yearning for—
A lengthening of sleep a lengthening of—
Morning.
Why do they visage empires come? From want of wanton wrecks to ruin? By force of several slaves severely Saving face
The same word
And its different kinds—
You want fresh grapes
But unfresh wine.
We are all unnamed,
As victims of Rome,
Figments of a poem
If on a cloudless day you feel a drip
Do not lick your upper lip
Novelist
Devoid of literary interest
Your language is English
But truly your language is a simplified Chinese
Befitting a great fabric of ease
In one in every fifteen lives
Making dreaded small talk with your fifteen wives…
There’s little better
Than warm curry in cool weather
Why did this happen instead of this?
They look for a reason besides their own laziness…
Little Sandy, just her luck—
Flattened by a garbage truck
On her way to Hebrew school
Her rabbi surely looked a fool
When calling out late Sandy’s name
Admonished that she never came.
My surfeit doesn’t dissipate
Like water flowing through a grate
My hunger like a leavened bread
Grows upon the fire instead
And surfeit comes a’pounding down
Like weeds get pulled up from the ground
Little Tracy knew, that when she boiled a kettle of water, and poured herself a cup of tea, that by the time she was finished with her first cup, the rest of the water would be too cold.
So Little Tracy lined a tray
With cups of boiling water;
If it didn't in the kettle stay, (she reasoned)
The water would be hotter.
But to Tracy's surprise,
When she went to reprise
From that tray, her second mug
The water inside
That she'd set aside
Was as cold as a witch's dug!
“So even if you keep on your mettle,
You always have to return to the kettle.”
Than coffee and cream
Is nothing better
Except in dream
Nor ascribe nor impute
To the tree or its roots
There’s no sorrow in liquor
You just get to it quicker.
You’ve come to love the taste
The feelings it inspires
Like baby blue between the skyscrapers and telephone spires—
The clouds are moving apace
And I am just a scapegrace
Little Lucy Loop-de-loop
Fell into a pot of soup
Someone had left out on the floor
Now Little Lucy was no more.
Her mom of course, could not have known
And tried to reach her on the phone—
Lucy! Lucy! Where could she be?
It’s almost time for milk and tea!
Well, you already know the rest
Guess what she served the dinner guests?
Her Little Lucy, boiled alive
And garnished with a sprig of chive
How often is the guiding principle in most our lives EXHAUSTION—
How often?
Je ne suis pas écrivain—
J’écris en vain.
All the ne’er-do-wells
Have cast their spells
Upon the unsuspecting youth—
Forsooth—
The no-good-niks, had they better known
Would not their wasted breath had sown
The means which they had once cathected
Were to have sex, unprotected;
And the ends which they have wrought
Were to—begot
Fall is when the leaves all drop
But summer heat did cause the rot
The child that did not grow older
Is starting to molder
The time for answer
Was when the question was asked—
But now the time has passed.
So many curmudgeonly items
Lace the trays of human wit
Service of an empty landing
Could not depend on it
Heaven! Earth! Sea!
—but what avails apostrophe?
At first you make them do your bidding
Then you tell them you were kidding
There are Tahitians
And Frenchmen
Exigency—
And none
Stockbrokers
And grasseaters
Lilies, and tillers,
Of the field—
Piranhas
And pariahs
You made a mess
Of Gethsemane
The apostles all have fled in vain
And why has the cock thrice crowed again?
In bed all night
My soldiers lain
My Judas windfall never came
His wraith will never stalk the earth
You pilfered me my reprimand
And tantamount to mirthless mirth
My capture was not worth the effort
What’s that?
In the snow?
Louis’s hat!
Know how I know?
In what you own, you must take pride,
And always write your name inside.
Bookending the squalor
A mess of weeds
Tangential to the mass
Of fragrant growths
Called sanity
The opera is not long enough,
They said, as if to appease me.
As its writer I wholly agree—
In its original version, the libretto spanned seventy-two hundred pages,
Most of the toil and boil of which were elided,
In favor of pungency.
Foolhardy gaze, Impeach me! Remember not The water soft Nor tint nor banish Instead The chime bells Mark the spring, Until the spring has vanished
The shape it makes
Between our faces
Will it be a vase?
I am not storm-proof—
How else am I like a fucking window?
The whole world is so full of people
We’re lucky to be spared even one single meter.
To be an author
Is such a bother.
I am not meet to life
But she is meet to me
My every plot, her every foil
Her leisure my unending toil
Where excess flower grow
The lilies of the field do toil
Weaving themselves into garlands
For the sheep and their shepherds to wear
Every experience I ever had
Was either forgettable, or bad.
Of thoughts my head is plenty full, And though I can see them plainly You, obstructed by my skull— You can't see them, plainly. I'll let them out so you can hear— I tried to push them out my ear— But they got covered up in wax And slipped and fell, and tumbled back. I tried to blow them out my nose But you happened to take issue My thoughts sprayed out all on your clothes— You wiped them up with tissue. I tried to squeeze them out my eye— But they got stuck, and formed a stye. Finally, I try my mouth— But it just comes out untoward, uncouth. I wish you could just join me here Where all my thoughts are always clear— Drill a hole Into my skull— Step inside the empty bowl— And watch the bubbles disappear…
I still need your support
Although I so often come up short
In fact I need it all the more
‘Cause my performance is so poor
I am my father’s son
That’s why I am so bothersome.
To take you for granted
Is the only thing I ever wanted.
Carry the burden of life alone,
And then, when you come home,
Hold me tight unto your breast
Until I sleep—then you can rest.
Sneezes, when held in, will burst out like rockets
From out of your sockets.
Letter to a beautiful girl on Gramercy Park North:
If you think me cold, it isn’t true
I’ve just got too much on my mind to look at you…
When I am not immediately understood
I get in a bad mood.
Trying not to drink
Is more difficult than you think.
The most beautiful women, I couldn’t list
The most beautiful women, I’ve never wist
Except in passing, on a train
A turgid crowd, a trickling lane
Plucked from within a mild haze
Of memories of schoolchild days
To list the girls I’ve fancied most
Would list the dead, and count their ghosts
We all become our mothers,
But some do more than others.
Pretty young girls turn to ugly young women
And the rest of the world keeps on swimming.
A list of people I despise:
Collin G., for telling me lies;
Chris L.
Who always smells;
Peter M.—
No one likes him;
Michael Kinalski, and Adam Sterling;
Scott Popinksi, and Larry Shirley;
Nicholas Q. and Henry C.
For always being mean to me;
And Arthur P. on the football team,
Who always ignores me, or so it seems;
Walter S.
Is so depressed
He brings down the mood
In Miss Kirkham's room
And Spencer Tate
Thinks he's so great
But's always rude
To Mrs. Klum;
Lastly, there’s Thurston,
Who cares more about sex
Than me as a person.
It’s December eighteenth The whole city is emptying out Like a storm drain after a long drought There is no snow on the ground, it’s unseasonably warm But because it’s so still, the city retains an unusual charm It’s now, when everything’s quiet— Although maybe at other times, I just can’t espy it— That I come to appreciate the enlightening view Respite will often afford you
Although I almost never cry
That one Beethoven quartet brings tears to my eyes