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LET US PRETEND WE ARE POETS
Let us pretend we are poets. In his mind, Joseph Obvious talks to them all: Harvard poets, Cummings, Eliot, Wallace Stevens, whispering to William James in Emerson Hall, whiskered William James, who...
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STATEMENTS FRIGHTEN THE MIND
How unkind of Poe to say The Raven was a fact. The Philosophy of Composition finished Romanticism. T.S. Eliot began. Taste was assumed to be Victorian. Moderns rebelled against both. But they are not...
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POETRY PAUSED
You can see poetry pausing during World War Two. The pentameter continued, but in truth, the poets didn’t know what to do. Ashamed they weren’t fighting, ashamed they didn’t see it coming (some of the...
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IT’S OBVIOUS
It's obvious I will make no one happy.At first, perhaps, but not finally.I will expect them to be more than what they are,but never demand it. The evening starmakes no demands, but I expect, Sara,you...
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I WISH I HAD A NAME
I wish I had a name like yours. A different one. Mine is so plain. But what are names? Names belong to whores. (Or cunning men, sodden with secret desire.) Rosalinda, come here and help me build this...
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WHEN JOKES ARE COMPLETELY TRUE
It took one second to recognize the typeand make fun of itand twenty years to learnthe joke was absolutely true.Your individual heart denies the joke---but it knew, it knew."Hold on a minute!" you...
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THAT KIND OF PLEASURE
That kind of pleasure will make you liebut when it doesn't, it doesn't.When the body falls down to die.Pleasure dreams you and makes you fly, confusing the adolescent,when the body falls down to...
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THE WORST PART OF DEATH
The worst part of death is the waiting.Despair attends every thought.The suicides don't want death.They want sudden death.I received mixed news concerning my father.The word, "arrangements,"paralyzed...
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IF TIME IS NOT DECAY
If time is not decay,perhaps immortality is possible.Painters and composers create the beautiful.What else do they do?Barry Gibb, maker of records, looks downfrom the balcony of the Kennedy Centeras...
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CIVILIZED STRANGENESS AND BOOMER DESPAIR
“There will come soft rains.” —Sara Teasdale Sara Teasdale wrote the most beautiful poem everand this poem of mine is a strange endeavor. “There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And...
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ONE MORE DETAIL
One more detail and I will die.I want there to be a point but I don't think there is.A result is a result, whether or not we fly.All that activity produced something;one can see the arrow going up on...
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HE NO LONGER CARES
He no longer cares what they are saying on the family newsletter,who is going to New York today(his sister's memorial)or what the radio is playing.There were highlights to his lifebut they weren't our...
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THE AMERICAN FORMULA: HEDONISTIC CENTRISM
The following emerged from one of our recent grueling, Scarriet editor, think-tank sessions. Senior Scarriet editor (coughing and sputtering): Seems like whenever bad zhit happens when a repub is...
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THE ONE PART
The poem is ruined by one part being too good,the part in the middle, which leaves the reader stunned,not left for the end,as the one good part should.It could be a line, "sung to a humble star," or...
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MY FATHER
In the hospice vigil the ego vanishes. You with mouth open on the bedare you for everyone. All we are,I now see, is a you for someone else.Whoever you might have beenexists behind a veil or is that...
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THE LYRICALLY HOPELESS AND BEAUTIFUL
The lyrically hopeless and beautifulmakes my life more hopeless with its beauty—strange! to think beauty drains us of hope!How does that happen?Would you like my explanation?Beauty so easily obtained...
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DADDY
“O when I get that true religion, hallyloo.” Old folk song. There are things we arewhich are like other thingswe love or don't loveor fix all night and repairas if we were climbing mountains or...
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BE AS BEAUTIFUL AS YOUR VERSE
Be as beautiful as your verse.When I traveled to Winsome Castle,I did not love you at first,until your look, your texture, your smellmaterially lifted me from my material hell.In the beginning of...
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WHO SHOULD SEE
There really isn't any reason to seethis---it isn't for the one who gaslights mesimply because she's unable to love me.We need an excuse to hate someonewhen love is thwarted---the physical seesto it...
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GAY MALES
From their religious and theatrical perches they decide what gets said by the women and the mournersonce your passionate heterosexuality's dead.Laughing at the vows of serious weddings---joining...
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