Cud
A woman, in her passion, cries
Out not for god or lover –
For though she mouths the names of both,
They only serve as cover.
The patient, in his agony,
He moans – but not for others.
His groaning is his comfort, bare.
So pain and lust are brothers.
And when a poet recreates,
On paper, hurt or passion,
His inner space, he ventilates
By channels of tradition.
******
For every poet sane, you’ll find
A dozen more, demented.
To sanity, I lost my claim
And never have regained it.
So do not search, within my verse,
For reason past the rhyme –
For madness is this inmate’s curse
And so he does his time.
And though a writer may have hope
His work will find some favor
In those who read him when he’s gone,
For now alone, I labor.
******
This poem that I’m writing is
A cloud that’s floating by.
I’ll watch it till I lose it in
The ever-changing sky.
The stanzas that I write are like
The leaves upon a tree.
They flutter in the breeze and then
They wither, falling free.
The verses that I scribble are
As waves upon the sea.
They’re born – and undulate a while –
And then they cease to be.
******
I taste the grass of verity
And chew it like a cow.
Some write for a posterity,
I savor here and now.
So some of what I’ve written is
The sound of satisfaction –
The feel and scent and taste of grass –
In bovine stupefaction.
But when the cow has lost her calf,
She calls for it, in pain.
We hear her lowing in the dark
And know – it is in vain.
******
When tempests come, they bend the trees
And make the branches cry.
And in the midst of wars, you hear
A grieving mother’s sigh.
So some of what I’ve written is,
In essence, just a wail.
You’ll hear it rise and ululate –
And lose it in the gale.
For every leaf that withers, there’s
Another, in the bud.
For every poet, gone his way,
Another, chewing cud.
2014 February 6th, Thu
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
