Five Poems from Hearth

POEM

When you permit me to see
With lucidity my anger
Know that it shines straight
Into your dark forest
Cutting through the inadequacies
With which we clothe ourselves
Like brambles So illuminating
That private place like some good soldier
That we call our heart.

POEM (old anxious and thin ...)

old anxious and thin grey-haired in white
suede hat and white fine coat dull stockings
to bright afternoon sun, woman closes her eyes
and takes off her shoes.

***

A little tough blonde white kid probably older than a kid
Smoking a cigarette and clutching a beer and making
her point


***

Peter
Stuyvesant
Park

The poor itinerant sleeps, the
Man in the wheelchair
goes round and round!


***


August 30 1980
(how round that date)

ANATOLIA

The primacy of their bright costumes
contrasts with the paucity of the soil
or with the city's soul-less concrete

Her bent back
amid solitary fields

POEM (The diseased body)

The diseased body
(which is)
recognized to be
a vehicle
of pathos
is up again,
late again
chanting to the cats!

What matters
what "matter" is,
what this scarred flesh
and tissue!
what this body
All immaterial!

Simon Pettet's new book, HEARTH, from which these poems are taken, published by Talisman House, is available at http://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781584980612/hearth.aspx and also at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Hearth-Simon-Pettet/dp/1584980613
Further info from Greenfield Distribution at gdibooks@aol.com.