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Poems Page One
my Juliet appeared,
balconied by dog day's indecision
and emotions' Atlantis
separated my sea of self-sufficiency.
I learned later
that I embraced a continent of love
and wondered about my modest dreams.
Seasons of discovery
zodiaked into being:
I know who sat for the madonnas
and why the Mona Lisa smiles.
The end of things
especial or non-unique,
like hand-rolled cigarettes
or almost black Amsterdam beer,
always brings
a bit of recognition I don't like:
debts linger.
I want more of them
or
too much is not enough
or
knowing is ignoring
or
(worst of all)
ending is better than beginning
like an adolescent habit
nobody else understands
(or knows you've got)
and you can't stop.
The end of things
is the truce of things:
an academic lisp of fact
that brings
a misbegotten start to a finish.
To know all kinds of love
you have to lay life,
down or with,
softly,
(like a free moth flies)
in some giant hayloft
as big as God's imagination.
Just because
you have to
and time dies.
Only novice fools
measure things and springs
by what they know
or by natural laws.
Memories of and about people
never only just die -
but finally.
Were I a star,
however small -
in whatever galaxy -
only just in sight
of day and night
on the unsteady mudball
of the world-earth;
then, possibly,
or, just maybe,
I'd have a sort of vantage point -
a type of perspective -
to see a little mirth,
to share a sense
of heavenly humor
at our self-derisive game.
I would be, after all,
an all-American star
- wouldn't I?
We get pregnant publicly
with each other,
in our minds,
where each abortion
involves time -
when now and then
become a rhyme
of consious men.
Getting large invisibly
is a private joke.
What's left to say
with language of the mind
after Sophocles and Freud,
Shakespeare, and Piaget
have posed the metaphors
of thought -
have rhymed the similes
of heart?
Who's to eulogize the witty aphorisms,
sagging like victor's flags
in an unjust war,
that simultaneously informed God
he was dead in Europe,
alive in America -
that praised unfamous men
as clearly as we see morning,
as loudly as we hear Mozart?
The regret of intellect
remains that we forget:
universes exist where people crowd and cluster
like biological galaxies on collision paths.
Euphoria is out of fashion now -
a new vocabulary of high's
replaced a state of mind
with a pharmacy -
a chemistry of intellect,addiction, and
a masochistic need for
withdrawal:
from truckings to regret
to rock, to TV, to media
undefined,
unrealized,
untimed.
ABC pronounced the
Beatles
individual last night -
a group is dead
it was said.
An irony of social anachronism:
some Nietzchean commentator
rears his head - and voice -
for each generation.
The electronic realism of the
heart ignores.
Psychology Today said the
heroin high was in '67
habits, like love, continue best
until death.
streaks a couple's time
like some natural beauty operator
or the vapor trail of love's loins
in a moment of sacred space.
Instant love
(a second's commodity, an eternity's guilt)
betrays the senses
like sugar flowers on a cake:
confectioners never enjoy just desserts.
The cocoon-type warmth
of after love
insulates - in the dark, dangerously:
discovery, a lazy risk;
pleasure, smooth monuments;
and company, a detriment.
Increments of time
make sluggish butterflies of duty;
purposes lose themselves
with each mistake:
Morning is a penal institution.
On Seeing "The Last Picture Show"
We were two
when we went out;
three returned
(my conscience, myself, and you)
memory joined us tonight -
(movies became real -
what happened to the Hollywood cliches?)
Memory molested me,
and he was a kind old man
who died suddenly.
But something atrophied and dirty
grabbed my knee of consciousness -
exciting me in some prohibited way,
I forgot what kind of response my
past required,
and then it grabbed my gut
- it hurt -
I wondered, then,
about you,
and I was ashamed of time
and twenty years ago.
It isn't fair, I said,
to see then
and be now
and think about later
with dread.
When asked of love,
doubt answers
first and finally,
leaving epitaphs
scattered
through the months
of orgasmic calendars
of ultimate New Years,
ignoring holidays
and sabbaticals -
indiscriminately.
Then
relevance and self-definition
bounce like light shows
and twist
like lovers wrapped
in the moment of discovery and
lonely grows
in the fungus familiarity
that together and trapped
has the difference
only
of sharing
or not.
Myth and love -
like faith -
differ justly
in degree
of instruction
and/or
self-destruction.
The chain of being answered
Plato's queries -
Sophocles could rely upon
the unities -
Shakespeare observed that
natural order
punished any interruption.
Somehow, computers lack
the human elements
of stimulus and response,
that is;
the laws of human deviation
have been traced through
circuitry,
coding behavior from
observation,
programming as accountable
variables diverge.
What dualism exists:
efficiency and culture
seem to ignore each other -
The choice presented?
Sense or sensitivity,
or
machine or brother.
Bittersweet is a word
invented for romance,
not love.
Forever belongs with guilt,
not happiness.
Strong, like a buttercup
or down from a butterfly's wing -
Solid, as a snowflake
or suntanned foam on the beach -
Fragile, like Mount Rushmore's features
or the icecap of the world:
I relate to opposites for meanings;
I have to live to die.
For Rod McKuen
Considering love for what it is
admits its isn't's:
Youth makes poets of inexperience,
artists of emotion -
Symbol phrases substitute
and happenings bloom into
a daisy
love-me, love-me-not kind of world
and describing selves
is more important than the senses.
Eventual age is actuality
and plucking petals seems a waste.
Only wives are total lovers.