POETRY
Poetry > Recent Poems
OCTOBER, 2020
At last I’ve learned when to act happy, when to play sad
As the grey of winter makes its first suggestion.
Strangely I am sad for loss, and what has disappeared,
In the state of saudade as Brazilian’s say,
Or Voznesenski in nostalgia for the present.
How I miss hugging and smelling each other
How I miss so many things.
We are ill-equipped to sleep through the winter.
Wouldn’t that prove a reasonable solution?
Awaken to the yellow happy-face of spring
When the modern world is paradise
Again.
The election has obsessed us; we hope, we hope
And I act happy. But am I my happy-happy?
I know I will act happy when Trumpius goes down
But already does the gut react with rage to these dead years.
Soon we return to the local news
And months of enduring the plague.
Death rates up, Nasdaq down, crime rate up,
Homeless town, climate this, climate that…
How I miss hugging and smelling each other.
How I miss so many things, I could scream.
Seeing Eye to Eye with God
Try to see things eye to eye with god
You end up a narcissus looking in the pond.
You may say god loves me, add a thumbs up emoji,
Like you love your little house trained dog--
But what is it you really love? Thyself.
I learned this because I am always blaming god,
Like he fucked up bigtime with the whole scheme.
Just calling god a he is my first stupidity,
As if he has a penis and an asshole, like me,
Whose shit stinks, just another horny mammal
With elaborate courting rituals and foreplay.
I don’t praise him for the phases of the moon,
The majesty of migration, the countless inventions
Of life, the cycle of seasons, and all the dappled bullshit.
Sure enough the generations have trod, have trod.
I praise those things, for what they are,
And accept the brutal murder of one bug to another.
A pinch of Spinoza’s worth a pound of Pascal.
I, for one, can’t accept the chaos of the infinite;
So I blame god for my shortcomings,
Allowing me to be, but never to see eye to eye,
Only this reflection of an ape that shaves his face
And combs his hair with ingeniously mixed goo.
Am I part of an elaborate experiment?
In every inch of the planet microscopic beings
Swallow each other up. Eventually they change,
Like everything in the universe of black holes and galaxies,
And something self-aware eventually becomes.
So here I am. I am. But by jealousy and greed,
My self- assured existence is the catalyst
For this unlikely evolution. I’m the loser.
So I’m pissed off, okay? I will die one day,
While this god keeps secret the big surprise,
And I’m supposed to sleep with a smile on my face.
I’m just a spoiled brat having a tantrum
With a parent. They said they love me, too.
Now look where they are.
The Year of COVID
The future is due sooner or later.
It’s stuck in traffic or missing a train.
I spend the year in a waiting room
Like under a willow in the rain.
How impatiently the days pass
Spinning like a tumble weed.
How little the moments last--
Time consumes all it receives.
I toss and turn in this morning
Knowing the hours to be worn,
Every minute another death recorded,
Every minute another tragedy born.
We who survive may look back
After the cures free us to mourn,
Holding hands in halls of packed
Humanity singing a requiem song.
The future will come, later or sooner,
Reaffirming it’s on the way.
But we have been to war and wounded,
And will never be the same.