Messing Around with Words: A Book of Poetry

By Stephen M. Honig

Whether inspired by contempt or by love, whether depressed by lack of clarity or being startled by what was clear, whether looking at the poverty in Africa or at rusting shells of burned-out tanks, whether puzzled by or angry at life, or both – Steve Honig’s poetry captures emotional power through a lens of sardonic detail.
It is not easy to describe a book of poetry with no theme. It is, at core, focused perceptions triggered by images, events and frustrations. Poems range from sexuality and self-doubt to rage at homo sapiens generally. A conversation with Frank Sinatra segues into a walk in a hillside cemetery while the poet’s mother meanders among the tombstones.
Perhaps notably, the longest poem is not a poem at all, but a review of the writings of an imaginary poet laureate, whose intellectual rise and inevitable fall to age chronicle a life spent in the pain of putting it all on paper.
Containing poems both in rhymed format and free verse, this book taps the vulnerability we all feel—and then brings a smile of recognition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546270539

Stephen M. Honig

Steve Honig has been writing poetry for five decades. Why? Steve suggests it is a defense mechanism against the lack of recognition of emotion in the world. His qualifications for writing poetry are, however, questionable. Asked about his credentials, the author replied: “Just read the poems and decide for yourself.” Classically educated in the Ivy League but better educated in the streets of Brooklyn, Steve Honig has a voice that is sometimes hard-edged, sometimes intensely sensitive, and always unexpected. The personal and the intellectual blend and clash in Steve’s writings; the struggle for feeling and the demands of communication are at an uneasy détente. Steve has four children, widely separated in years. He lives with his wife, his youngest son and a dog whose feet are always muddy, in a Boston suburb. He practices corporate law during the daylight hours. None of which explains the contents of this volume.

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© 2019 Stephen M. Honig. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  01/04/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7055-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7054-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7053-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018914390

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

"I am the poet of the body

And I am the poet of the soul." — Walt Whitman

CONTENTS

Author’s Statement

POEMS OF LOVE

Love, Hate And Stopping Points In Between

Interior And Exterior Geography

Paradoxical Couplets

I Don’t Know

Man Bites Dog For Love

Love Is Confusing

A War Of Young Girls

Virtual Virus

Aphorism

Floating Gliding Burning

I Don’t Love Her Anymore

It’s So Nice

Aspects

Ol’ Lil’s Little List

Dancing

One Intimate Priority

Prayer

Happy New Year’s Eve

Modern Puppy Love

I Miss You

Laura In The Morning

Ode To Springtime

Sonnet To L

S.K.

Progression Woman

It Ought Not Offend

Circus

Sonnet For Jeannie

Who Has Loved You?

Misapprehension

My Room

The Other Day I Did Not Love Her

Eyes

Midnight Telephone

I/You/We/You/I

Communications (Responsively)

Approximately Nineteen Lines Of Approximately Blank Verse

Annotated

Crystal

Take No Prisoners

A Conversation With Frank Sinatra

Is Lust A Sin Of Man?

Baudelaire

First Night

Sex Stream

Dementia

The Schwartzman Cycle

POEMS OF SELF

Four Poems After Midnight

Motor City

Blue Skies From Now On

The Sun Is In My Eyes

History Of Words

August 15, 1986/ 8PM

Old Book Of Rhymes Today

Muse Of Another Day

Sonnet: My Name Is …

I Am Born Tomorrow

POEMS OF AGE

Pain Of Growing Old

Goddamned Hammer

A Life

It Should Never Rain At Night

I’ll Tell You How It Is

Two Views Of Night

Three Poems At 72

Time Poem

I Float In My Bath

POEMS OF DEATH

Somewhere North (Fall ‘70)

Death Explained

Bryan

Sequence

I

The Dead Man’s Wife

Cambridge Graveyard

The Cemetery

River Of Death

Burial

Death Of A Soldier

Reflections Of The Dying, Echoes Of The Dead

MORE POETRY

Walt Disney

Whistling Taps

Whistle Down The Night

Morning In New York

Cauldron City

Times Square

Two Poems About Poetry

City Sill In Winter

Melting

Snow

Stranger Snow

New England Snowtime

Airplane Over Kansas (1970)

Flying

Four Poems About Poetry

Two Poems Not About New York

A Dialog

Apprehension

Breezy Day In P-Town 1980

April

Better Worlds

Bush

Church Stairs

Cold Wet Night

Dawn In The Hills

Dawn

Diffuse

Distraction

Do Not Call This Morning

Drive He Said

Dusk

Epilogue

Flowers

Folk Song

Hooky In South Boston

House On The Strand

I Came Like Water

I Take Walks

Ideas– Fall 1970

If I Am Afraid

Judicial Advisement

Known

Leaving You: A Poem In The Form Of A Letter

Letters To The Editors Of Life — 1980

Long Time No Rhyme

Mali

March Seashore

May Day, 2018

Money Money Money

Mundane

Night Of The Bitter Moon

Night Time

Normal

Not Well? Big Girls Don’t Cry

Nothing

Once

Patina

Photo Of A Dictator

Mealtime

Memories Of Tomorrow

Mind Heart Soul

Poet Of Body And Soul, After Whitman

Prairie Flower

Prologue

Rachel Cohen Sings The Blues

Ron Rico Rum Advertisement

Satchmo’s Lips

Shining

Shortest Day

Flag

Somewhat Like

Sun

Sunlight

Take A Letter, Better

The Bought Society

The Good Old Days

The Marriage

The Quickening

The Surrender

The Theft

Tomorrow

Tuna On Rye

Tanks

Coda For End Of The Book

AUTHOR’S STATEMENT

I wrote these poems for myself. I suspect all who write poems do the same. These poems trace my thoughts over the five decades during which they were written. They express themselves in two ways.

First, they are statements of ideas, as diverse and unruly as those ideas have occurred to me.

Second, they reflect an interest in words; the title of this collection is purposefully chosen to highlight that the words themselves have an independent life. Words are the stuff that dreams are made of.

You will note an inconsistency of style, for which I make no apology as the author himself is inconsistent. My mother raised me with a love of 19th century American poetry, much of it intensely rhymed and metered. There is something of a rewarding intellectual game in crafting emotion into ordered form, and in playing with ideas within a structure that can reveal unexpected juxtapositions. But there is also a freedom in letting those emotions and ideas pour out in such form as they demand. I see no reason not to mix those two methods within a single piece. Sometimes, you just feel like messing with words.

I dedicate these poems to the people who shared my life and ideas and emotions, as these poems contain the expression of those things; the poems are much their doing, and I simply the scribe. My mother who loved poetry and indeed in her declining years could remember not much but could remember, recite and smile about her favorite rhymes. My father, whose natural facility with words was passed down, whether by genes or osmosis I will never know. And to those women whom I have loved and who have loved me. And to my children; I cannot say that I love them as that word is trite and shop-worn and wholly inadequate to capture the width and depth of my feelings towards them.

I like some of what is within this book. I am shocked to have given birth to some of it. I cannot say that I like other things within this book, but I see almost fifty years of poetry as something of a personal history, and as such I have included it all. While it gives me pleasure to think that a reader would either like or find interest in the contents, that is not the reason for my causing this book to be published. Rather, and frankly, it is to be remembered and understood. We leave behind us a memory of ourselves within those few, those important few but indeed only a few, who know us as a person. For those who follow them, we leave behind some photographs, and a name on a family tree and that is all; at least, that is all for those of us who lead a private life without a public profile that finds its way into formal history. If you are vain enough to want to leave a record of ideas and emotions, how can you achieve that vanity?

Well, you can write poems and put them in a book. That is what I have done.

Fall, 2018

POEMS OF LOVE

LOVE, HATE AND STOPPING POINTS IN BETWEEN

[These poems date from 1970 through the end of the '80s and explore the ups, downs, depressions and elations of personal relationships we categorize grossly as love and hate; it is actually far more complicated than that, as can be seen from the euphoric and bitter works below. Seems that I remain often wed to rhyme, clearly a 19th century affectation; but the rhyme creates a controlled mood that can express peace in pace, or sardonic reference to peace when really what is happening is war - or worse. As to the blank verse, freedom from rhyme permits stream of emotion much closer to how we experience emotion ab initio, in its unanalyzed initial iteration. In all events, never apologize for what you write; worst that can be said of it is that it is bad poetry, and as to that judgment —who is to say?]

Cadenza

You are my song of love,

Cadenza in the sky.

You are the birth of Spring,

A new-born virgin’s cry.

You are the moon at dusk

Along the silent seas.

You are the breeze at dawn

That frolics in the trees.

You are the voice of life

That rises from the light.

You are the first-seen star

Across the spreading night.

You are my symphony,

Sonatas of the soul.

Flarings of the cymbals,

Drums that dare to roll.

You are the rhythm beat,

The how and where and why.

You are my song