Here's a couple of sad poems this guy (see picture from ~13, 14, 15 years ago) wrote:
"I will make a poem of true riches" -W.W.
True riches only found in eyes
And richer still in those that cry
for longing of a dear, true friend
Who, gone too long, will come again
When softer shadows paint this hall--
And new-born leaves find hue and fall.
[23 September 1996]
The above poem was written in response to several things:
1) The Whitman line is from part 12 of "Starting from Paumanok" the poem continues:
I will make the true poem of riches,
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward and is not dropt by death;
I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the bard of personality,
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other [...]
and earlier in that poem (part 9) (and this is the stanza from Whitman that as a high school boy first hooked me) he preaches:
What do you seek so pensive and silent?
What do you need camerado?
Dear son do you think it is love?
Listen dear son--listen America, daughter or son,
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it satisfies, it is great,
But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all.
2) A newly dead dad (17 September 1995)
3) The love of a girl that was "just a friend."
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I grew up in one house; in fact, I only ever had one bedroom that I shared with two brothers, then one brother, then none. That house was on Adams Street, 407. In college, I lived with some friends for 1 3/4 years, first on a couch (unofficailly) and then officially in an upstairs bedroom, at 407 Laramie Street.
407's
Twenty-two years old, upstairs bedroom
Of a college house, sounds like bridge night.
Suddenly, ten again, my brothers are out--my
sisters are gone-- I sit, by myself, in a shared room,
listening to women laugh and men move ice-
cubes in small glass tumblers. Now, mason jars
and Jim Beam and the women are still laughing--
and I am still listening, by myself, in a shared room.
