If I Were In Charge Of The World

If I were in charge of the world I'd cancel oatmeal, Monday mornings, Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg. If I were in charge of the world There'd be brighter nights lights, Healthier hamsters, and Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.

Let It Enfold You

Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you when I was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing.

Gentleman Alone

The young maricones and the horny muchachas, The big fat widows delirious from insomnia, The young wives thirty hours' pregnant, And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night, Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters Surround my solitary home, Enemies of my soul, Conspirators in pajamas Who exchange deep kisses for passwords. Radiant summer brings out the lovers

25 Minutes To Go

They're buildin' the gallows outside my cell. I got 25 minutes to go. And in 25 minutes I'll be in Hell. I got 24 minutes to go. Well, they give me some beans for my last meal. 23 minutes to go. And you know... nobody asked me how I feel.

Haiku (Never Published)

Drinking my tea Without sugar- No difference. The sparrow shits upside down --ah! my brain & eggs Mayan head in a Pacific driftwood bole

Kaddish, Part I

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after-- And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing how we suffer-- And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

Something strange is creeping across me. La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,

Remembrance Of Christmas Past

They let the children out of school too early. I left the Christmas shopping till too late. Each day we had a holiday excursion, Which gave us the entire week to wait in line for Movies by Disney, Gift-wrapping by Lord & Taylor, And everyone's restrooms. On Christmas Eve we started to assemble The easy-to-assemble telescope

My First Love

It was a fine sunny day when I first met him, Tall, dark and handsome, dimples on his cheeks; I truly admired this man, The wholeness in him brought thrill to my heart. He was my first crush, my first love, I loved his eyes glued on my eyes; I could hear his heartbeat as mine, His actions truly brought me pure delight.

Marriage

Should I get married? Should I be Good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

Heroic Simile

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in the gray rain, in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, he fell straight as a pine, he fell as Ajax fell in Homer in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge the woodsman returned for two days to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing and on the third day he brought his uncle.

Invitation To Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying. In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals, please come flying, to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums descending out of the mackerel sky over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water, please come flying. Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships

To A Sad Daughter

All night long the hockey pictures gaze down at you sleeping in your tracksuit. Belligerent goalies are your ideal. Threats of being traded cuts and wounds --all this pleases you. O my god! you say at breakfast reading the sports page over the Alpen as another player breaks his ankle

Megalomania

Bird perched, Branch fell Bird thought, “I did”. Hen cackled, Sun Rose Hen thought, “I did”. Frog croaked, Cloud rained Frog thought, “I did” Firefly flashed, Bushfire razed Firefly thought, “I did”. Fish peed, river flooded Fish thought, “I did”

Ave Maria

Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to it's true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must

Possibilities

I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything.

Channels

Channel 1's no fun. Channel 2's just news. Channel 3's hard to see. Channel 4 is just a bore. Channel 5 is all jive. Channel 6 needs to be fixed. Channel 7 and Channel 8- Just old movies, not so great. Channel 9's a waste of time. Channel 10 is off, my child.

The Pieces Of My Heart

I was walking this lonely wilderness And then I met you I had no intention of falling ‘Cause my heart's pieces, were but a few. My stomach filled with butterflies My cheeks painted with blush Nerves shake my knees And I feel my warm blood rush.

Graceland

Tomb of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside

I Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee

I tell you that I see her still At the dark entrance of the hall. One gas lamp burning near her shoulder Shone also from her other side Where hung the long inaccurate glass Whose pictures were as troubled water. An immense shadow had its hand Between us on the floor, and seemed To hump the knuckles nervously, A giant crab readying to walk,