HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED

I stopped looking for you
I stopped waiting for you
I stopped dying for you
and I started dying for myself
I aged rapidly
I became fat in the face
and soft in the gut
and I forgot that I’d ever loved you
I was old
I had no focus, no mission
I wandered around eating and buying
bigger and bigger clothes
and I forgot why I hated
every long moment that was mine to fill
Why did you come back to me tonight
I can’t even get off this chair
Tear run down my cheeks
I am in love again
I can live like this



HIS MASTER'S VOICE

After listening to Mozart
(which I often did)
I would always
Carry a piano
Up and down
Mt. Baldy
And I don't even mean
A keyboard
I mean a full-sized
Grand piano
Made of cement
Now that I am dying
I don't regret
A single step.



GO LITTLE BOOK

Go little book
And hide
And be ashamed
Of your irrelevance

A fluke
Has made you prominent
You were meant
To be discovered
Later

When there are no more
Floods and earthquakes
And holy wars

Go little book
And stop disgracing me
There are serious men
And women in my life
And you have given them
The upper hand

Hide behind
A window
O my dear lighthearted
And transparent
Book
Or crush yourself
Beneath a defeat

But hide
Hide quickly now
And let me hear from you
In our secret code
Which resembles
A bad cough

That dark rattle
Which ignores
The challenges of love
The crystals of perfection

O speak to me
From places
You will find

Go little book
Invite me there


THOUSANDS

Out of the thousands
who are known,
or who want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say
I am one of the fakes,
and this is my story.


MY MOTHER ASLEEP

remembering my mother
at a theater in Athens
thirty
thirty-five years ago
a revue by Theodorakis
those great songs
she fell asleep
in the chair beside me
in the open air theatre
she had arrived that day
from Montreal
and the play started
close to midnight
and she slept through
the mandolins
and the great songs
I was young
I hadn’t had my children
I didn’t know how far away
your love could be
I didn’t know
how tired you could get


THE GREAT EVENT

It's going to happen very soon. The great event
which will end the horror. Which will end the sorrow.
Next Tuesday, when the sun goes down, I will
play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will
reverse the effects of the world's mad plunge into
suffering, for the last 200 million years. What a
lovely night that would be. What a sigh of relief, as
the senile robins become bright red again, and the
retired nightingales, pick up their dusty tails, and
assert the majesty of creation!


THE PARIS SKY

The Paris sky
is blue and briht
I want to fly
with all my might

Her legs are long
her heart is high
The chains are strong
but so am I