Five poems written this summer

Bowling

Once you are grown and have left school
  you start to think
That some once-feared activities now are safe
Don’t be a fool
It’s only because you’ve carefully
Polished and constructed an adult state
That’s calculated to minimize familiarity with
  Such scabs of old self-hate
As bowling
And all other sort-of sports
That get your hair up, raise your teeth
Send flowing through you the abominable heat
Of pungent testosterone, the eau du adolescence 
  that for other men
Must smell of success –but for you always,
Of defeat
You may be twenty-seven now, no longer
  the frightened child you were inside
But the years drop off you, awful quick
When you see those years' accumulated pride
Go down that gutter grandly rolling
You are again the boy you were,
 in love and war (and, apparently, in bowling)
It turns out you are not better than
You thought you were
  In playing love’s winning hand
For twenty frames
Within that lane
All that’s left is fear
The curse
Of unforgotten teenage years
And the indulgent cheers
  That go down worse
Than the warm beer


Zen Mind

I once gave Buddhism
  An honest try
It didn’t do much --
 I think I know why
I’m actually not wanting
 To quiet my mind
I’d like it a bit louder
 In fact, I find
It’s better to feed it
 Than to deny it
For I’m in for the worst
 When it goes quiet


Foliage

I don't believe
I'm over-finicky in matters of poetry
Think not I am
Fastidious as to its many variants
All I desire
Is that a poem express some thought
Idea
Feeling
Or human experience
Is that so much
To require?
You may say
So broad is that list
That no poem ever writ
Would not find
A place in it
You would not persist
In that contention
If you could see all the semi- mystical rot
About nature, mandrake and cyclamen out there
That ought
to mean something
But does not


Great Poets

In reading the collected life's work
of any much esteemed poet
One finds some that meets a certain standard
And a lot that's far below it
But more – it seems, when it's arrayed in order,
  that the best always appears at the borders
  I.e., at the beginning and end of the story
  When a young man’s rage becomes an old man’s fury
Indeed it would seem a fellow's finest
When he is nearest to birth and death, that is, divinest
And closest to sharing that most paradoxical
trait of the one known as All- Seeing,
That is, the quality of not actually being.


What Just Happened?

They waved for my glorious departure
Truly, I had conquered, I had won.
The next day, I was back where I started
A kid in his tennis shoes, a shlub.
I was James Comey on
His first day without a badge.
I assume that is what death is like; life –
  However fine –
Being now past, hence
Non-existent
Having no bearing at all on
  What one is now
Which is not.


And a bonus...

I saw the first half of Meet Me in St Louis
One time
I couldn't get past the crime
Of these white bread stiffs selling Kate down the river
With a false accusation of a late dinner
Just to cover up for some insufferable romantic intrigue
Hope some day
If I ever watch the rest
What happens next
Is 'Lonzo trips on Tootie's skates
And breaks his neck