a few new poems

mike

kentucky utilities

of course I only ever did the easiest thing
fortunately for me that meant hopping
like a small bird down the sidewalk to a girls door
and kissing her there as often as I liked

I would ask you not to be foolish about all of this
But I came into the room with a joke that I intend on telling
what do you call a deity who wont leave you a lone?

I will give you a moment to think while I
Open us each a beer, here, drink you little critter
Life is hard and that boy has left you and Christ
If you didn’t come to my side to beg advice

I would rather you have asked a lion in urbana
Or our handsome friend at Princeton he would
Have told you what I could not.

That loving is easy as getting offended
And that the end of love is a rock always in your shoe
Which is why I took to hopping to that girls door to kiss.
oh i could have bought new shoes, but Buddha pest.
oh god, i almost forgot the joke.
that a deity so busy, wouldnt leave us all a lone.





something else

I must have thought I would just happen upon the truth
Some afternoon while walking to the store.
I thought I would turn down the produce isle
to find the lemons All gone
and the apples hard and green like I was
vanished.

But Now with a backpack full of groceries and modern poets
all I want to do is say
Forhan Tate, Shapiro, give it a rest,
Williams, Rohrer, Olds
Cant you see I was trying to live a life here
Before you begged me to look closely
you frauds
Fair weather friends
come down from the universities
I need you here with me now
hands dirty like mine Shoes scuffed
no no give me your faces to kiss You sweet angels
I am alone now my apartment is nothing
Comeback back back to me please brothers sisters
Hall Howell Strand,
Stern Nemerov Vance

My generation is losing the will to keep going
Have you gone was it like that
going then gone again

Please fathers, mothers, god fathers please
Nye Smith Synder we cant work if you don’t show us
Kunitz, stop feeding us the fish you catch
stop telling us how deep the water is
Gluck please I know you don’t want to
Let me sleep in your back yard I have a tent
I need something from you now poems weren’t enough
Don’t you see you set my course you taught me How to fall
but never how to stand back up

Oh Zbigniev, oh Collins, oh Merwin god damnit
Don’t leave me to do this on my own your poems
I haven’t got them all memorized yet ive borrowed out most
So What will I do and it was I who pretended to know
Nothing about Sylvia plath or ted Hughes
It is I who never read leaves of grass
But I ate those plums in the icebox ect.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed.

I thought by trusting in you I would
happen upon the truth somehow.
Oh Poets
Oh Teachers
I need you now
Please.