I'll read now a group of poems from my new manuscript,
a full heart.
I'll start off with a fairly light poem called Mae West.
This is a poem of a group I'm writing called
going to school with the stars and explores what
we have to learn from each one.
They're really TV poems.
Mae West, she comes on drenched in a perfume called
self-satisfaction.
From feather boa, from feather boa, to silver pumps.
She does not need to be loved by you
though she'll give you credit for good taste.
Just because you say you love her,
she's not throwing herself at your feet in gratitude.
Every other star reveals how worthless
she feels by crying when the hero says he loves her.
Or how unhoped for the approval is when the audience applauds
are big number.
But Mae West takes it as her due.
She knows she's good.
She expects the best for herself and knows
she's worth what she costs, and she costs plenty.
She's not giving anything away.
She enjoys her admirers, fat daddy, or muscle man,
and doesn't confuse vanity and sex, though she never turns
down pleasure, lapping it up.
Above all she enjoys herself, swinging her body that says,
me, me, me, me.
Why not have a good time.
As long as you amuse me go on.
I like you slobbering over my hand big boy.
I have a right to.
Most convincing, we know all this not by her preaching it
but by her presence.
It's no act.
Every word and look and movement spells independence.
She likes being herself, and we who don't can only
look on astonished.