Song of Thanksgiving

I have been angrier, but not since Spring,
When all those damned buds bloomed — you do recall
The dead land, don’t you, sort of a catch-all
For those distressed wheatfields? It’s humbling,
The murmurs of our past, the way they sing
“Turned glorious summer!” But you know the Fall
Is always on its way. So you stand tall,
And I rise, too, intending everything,

But I do nothing, just the same as you,
And nobody is there with grace, or style,
And even when you make that awful smile,
The grimace of a lion in the zoo,
I can’t remember why we’re here. It’s true:
Our lives are acid, and our hearts are bile.

Life Chance

I don’t want to get by; let me get rich,
I want enough so tantrums, insults, jeers
Go uncorrected. As daft old age nears,
I need enough so that the fits I pitch
Result in someone calling me a bitch,
Then squirming in his warm blanket of fears.
When people listen to my startling sneers
I want them ready to jump into a ditch.

I want the stuff in massive, tumbling piles,
In mounds, enough to strain my elbow joint,
So much that I could have a priest anoint
My laurelled skull and praise my manly wiles,
Counting the women that my cash beguiles.
There is a chance that life will disappoint.

Rather Like This One

I do the great travail invisible:
The rising after rhyme and worthwhile metre,
The most exact word — however risible,
It’s what I offer to my own verse-eater.
Did Shakespeare also clamber after rhymes?
Of course he did — it’s just that his blank verse
Is mostly what’s recalled in these late times:
“To be or” — both a blessing and a curse.
But he wrote sonnets, too, much like this one,
And be it This man’s scope or that man’s art,
Or, There is no new thing under the sun,
Or, Never say that I was false of heart,
The right words we chase after may appear,
Whispering themselves into my ready ear.

Normal

Unspeakable becomes our normal state,
Our eddying regard is stabilized
And made to seem sublime, smoothly devised
To make this riotous life seem sedate,
As neat as dimes on the collection plate,
As we two were until the ship capsized.
I had your crazy blueprint notarized,
Expecting trouble. That’s my usual fate.

It’s more a shock each time than a relief
When you tell me nobody gets to quit:
These games you play remind me of the Pit,
With every sort of murderer and thief.
I put my hand over my mouth with grief
Each time you speak. I’ve gotten used to it.