To be, always, dark, mere murky shadows
Of the bright prismatic thought, rainbow wit
That streaks about, trapped behind the window,
Locked. The translation? Bungled counterfeit.
(5/31/14)

Face it! The boundaries of art are forms,
The latest fashions that adorn ideas,
That tweak the eye, the ear, the mind—perform
A magic that turns artists into seers.

Yet, always, artists do project ego
We shape worlds reflecting our obsession
We forget that art is, despite our throes
A formal and aesthetic expression

Thrust your ego if you must, goshdarnit—
Just slick it up—clothe it in a sonnet.
(3/25/14)

About how hard it was to end their tales—
Rich brews rendered in impeccable prose
Detailing life’s complexity—derailed
By that swift unsatisfactory close.

How can writers simply end their stories?
How can their woven textures simply stop?
Real life doesn’t lend itself to glories,
Thus novels tend to finish with a plop.

I prefer the sonnet’s formal rigor
Craft that final couplet—pull the trigger.
(2/5/14)

Without words, we pointed at stones, waved hands.
Movement filled with meaning—“bring that thing here!”
Then words emerge, soon complex talk expands,
But unborn writing won’t be birthed for years.

Thus memory contrived fine mnemonic
Tools that rendered contracts, songs, sales and tales
In metered rhyming verse, formal sonics—
Dactylics, iambs, anapests—firm wails—

That lodged in memory ‘till we transcribed
Those strange sounds to writing, reading—inscribed
On parchment, hieroglyphed, chiseled on stones—
Tangible contracts and glorious poems.
(1/26/14)

December twenty-first
And my mortgage—
A poem a week—
Remains unpaid.

I jotted notes
Wrote two titles
Even made a quatrain,
But could not complete
A single verse.

My first remarks
Defined the power
Of unregulated greed—
The fertile seeds
Of revolution—
To crush humanity
Reduce this shining city on a hill
To chaos,
Leaving cold ashes
In its place.

But I’ve tolled that bell
So often that it’s cracked.

“Interest,” I thought,
“An interesting word.”
It’s what you get from lending,
Pay to borrow.
But, significantly,
It’s what makes life bright.
Imagine, if you can,
A life devoid of interests,
Except, perhaps, the meds
Reducing pain;
That’s what lies ahead.

Which, of course, leads to self-interest.

Born to melancholy
And suspicion,
I distrust those
Who seem to want to help.
I find the mission
Of most charities fictitious,
Fraudulent scams,
Enrichment schemes.
My doctor called—
Asked me to come in.
My first thought was
A milking plot
To bilk my Medicare
With fees for services,
Lab tests and the like.
But someone set me straight—
Providers get a capitation fee
And nothing more,
Which made me think
A darkest thought—
How Medicare’s prosperity
Would flourish
If they could introduce
A tiny “de”
In front of my
“Capitation.”

I made my living teaching poetry
Beguiled my students
With the mysteries
Of form, aesthetics, melody.
I’m much older now
And look back with a modicum
Of guilt.
I lectured fervently
On that famous ode
That ends:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
Perhaps some threads
Of truth are woven into beauty.
But to argue that truth
Is beauty just boggles.
I wonder how much beauty
Keats found in the truth
Embodied by the long,
Agonizing illness
That killed him
At the age of twenty-six;
What beauty radiates
From our planet’s history
Of storm, disaster, plague,
And ceaseless war?

Perhaps,
Without a 23.4 degree tilt
In the axis of our Earth,
We might be freed
From the deadly chill
And morbid heat
Gifted by those
Solstices.
(12/21/13)

Occasionally
I canonize a pet,
Exalt my wife and sons,
And revel in the mystery
Of sun, moon, stars.

But mostly I decry
The mess the masses
Have contrived
Through advertising,
Greed, theology, and politics.

For three thousand years
We’ve preached morality,
Teach it in school,
Then graduate into
Murderous, insane reality.

If ever a book
Of my bitter verse appears—
My history of ego and of nations—
Its title will declare its motivation:
A Sequel to The Book of Lamentations
(9/26/13)

Assonance, consonance, meter and rhyme
Grace sonnets and limericks and villanelles;
Metrical feet dance to patterns that chime,
And sometimes entrance our mademoiselles.

But “form,” most moderns find,
Is just too burdensome!
“I’ve got stuff in mind
That I must wail;
No time to fuss with rhyme
Or count out syllables—
Too damn much travail.

As for aesthetics—
Sensitivity, art, and beauty—
Give me a break!”
Lyrics, after all,
Are not the only way
We poets slake
Our thirst, vent our gall.

Notice that I ramble, reveal my doubt;
Hysterical, I versify and shout
About form, style, because I’m all burned out,
And cannot think of what to write about.
(8/20/13)

Good humored, he replied he found me “deft”
(Now there’s a word you don’t see ev’ry day).
Perhaps he meant my poetry had heft,
Was skillful in a sure and easy way.

At eighty-three, my body’s sore, not deft,
So physicality’s not what he meant
Despite my age I’m not yet brain bereft
Though memory is often dark or bent.

Perhaps perceptive, honest and candid,
He simply noticed that I’m right-handed.
(7/13/13)

Well known unwritten protocols insist

On generosity, however mild.

One never growls “Dear friend, please, please desist!

Your hapless, somber verse leaves art defiled.”

The editors (kind, always) never say:

“Your poems just stink—please, please why don’t you quit?

Your fumbling words convey an ass’s bray.”

Their rejects purr “Quite nice, but don’t quite fit.”

My wincing friends respond “My fav’rite lines

Are E and F”—they never say “You bore.”

And recently, one editor opined,

“Two of your verses really struck a chord.”

Which chord? A flared C major CRESCENDO,

Or B flat minor diminuendo?

(6/3/13)

Down at the tennis courts I showed a friend
A morbid poem I wrote last month called “Flame,”
Wherein I cite my own spark’s ashy end—
Burnt out—no light or heat to drive life’s game.

This lady friend (both beautiful and smart)
Took umbrage at my self-demeaning whine.
“Your verses testify! Your verbal art
Provides the power, heat—the force divine

That lights the avenues of humankind,
That warms the passions and ferments the brew—
Intoxicating quaff—unties our binds.
Your hot bright heart’s not dead—it burns anew!”

Wow, I thought—could that possibly be true?
Is that what narcissistic poets do?
(5/23/13)