J. Kates: Two Poems

DÉBAT DU CŒUR ET DU CORPS


I’ve grown too old to listen to the blues
I drove cross-country to when I was young.

A person’s never too old for the blues.

The woe they wail so well’s no longer news —
A bee will drop its stinger once it’s stung.
I’ve grown too old to listen to the blues
because, by now, I’ve nothing left to lose
that’s not already left behind and sung.

A person’s never too old for the blues.

I gave up cigarettes and sex and booze
and anything that might have got me hung.
I’ve grown too old to listen to the blues.

Sooner or later, you still have to choose
the poison that you roll around your tongue.
A person’s never too old for the blues.

That’s someone’s funky line, I know, but whose?

Boy, you don’t know who you’re stuck among.

I’ve grown too old to listen to the blues.

A person’s never too old for the blues.

 
~~~

THE MUSE WRITES BACK


‘Heads-up: there’s a poem dedicated to J. K. and its title is “After the Abortion.”‘


Poems are, and are not, children. They can be
conceived, abandoned, cherished — or aborted —
found again and fostered, even forty
years along. So it was with you and me.

We did so very well with literature.
You drew from me. I was inspired by you.
We wrote each other. Some drafts I review
and even today turn into something newer.

Children are not poems. What might have been
means something different now to each of us.
We passed our chance to talk about it then,

fell out of touch. What we have done and seen,
our separate lives have flourished, more or less.
You proudly published, called your first book, Flesh.

~~~~~

Copyright 2026. J. Kates.

J. Kates is a poet, translator and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation and a Käpylä Translation Prize.