I’m getting close to a draft of my collection of short prose and poems. Due out this Fall! Or Summer! Or, most likely never, since I have no confidence and not enough readers to make it worth while(spread the word, please).
Anyway, I found the following poem and thought it interesting enough to share, and maybe include. This is from a time when, as a young poet, I’d try to write a poem in the style of other poets I admire. This one is based on a poem, which if I remember correctly, is called “Spleen”, from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal. Enjoy(At least read).

Based on Baudelaire

When I was like the king
of a rainy country,
young, and yet mostly old,
I looked emaciated, sick
over coffee cups and endless cigarettes.
And the dogs who once where anathema
are now longing ideals
to wipe away the sense of being alone.
Where once I sat bored,
unable to lift my spirit, by game
or fawning ladies,
I now sit waiting for them to return
to stare across the distance to see me again
cold and thin,
idolized, though by undue means.
When once, I was like the king
of a shadowy land,
now I am sitting at a rickety table,
and wishing to usurp the throne again.
To take back that thirsty sip at Lethe,
to find again the fire of belief
of railing dialog and screaming evening
of no voice heated looks
of no waiting, no wanting
of all wanting of my heart screaming
not “I want I want” but “I can take”
that is the end, I should think.
When the depressed past
is longing, the future pure
and full of overly sane conversations
over the same beer, the same bar
the sameness of losing a kingdom of one.