Sunday, February 19, 2012

As Much of a Manifesto as They’ll Let Me Get Away With


I cannot keep a poem from its folly. Tricks
in it prevent me from subjecting it to Politics.

It won’t elucidate the daily news.
Its interest is aboundingly in views

of which I cannot guess the point.
Success for it is when it’s put me out of joint.

I’d like to rant and rave: make verses vent it –
but they lack currency for that: they’ve spent it.

They will not let me pine for love too long:
They shut down at first hints of whine. It’s wrong

apparently to ask them to reflect me.
They won’t be mirrors: they deflect me

every time I try to put an equals sign
between themselves and me. What may be mine

(whatever that could be) does not belong to them.
When I require an answer they reply “ahem.”

I’d tell you more about what poems do and don’t –
but such stuff shuts a poem up; therefore I won’t.




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