Okay
I’ll give up calling them poems
I could learn how to write a sestina
But I can’t believe that
That’s what I should do
I could limit myself to noble sentiments
Suppress the autobiographical subject
And commit exclusively to moral and emotional uplift
Primary colors and major triads
I could go back to school
I could risk rejection and try to publish
In a literary magazine
Perhaps sponsored by a university
I could adopt conservatism
And tell history to halt

Ignorance is infinite
Especially among the self-described artists
Tennyson thought trains ran in grooves
You’ve got to prove your worth
You’ve got to earn respect
And once you accept these necessities
You’ve got to give up and quit
Because knowledge is always partial
And sorrow witless
I’m not respectable
I’m not worthy
I disapprove of my actions and of myself
Bad art is art nevertheless
And so I no longer care what you call them
Call them compulsory excrescences

Well of course things fall apart
That goes without saying
And the buildup too proceeds
In momentary equilibrium
Complex hues and subtle dissonances
Though seen of none save
Well nobody probably
The minute particulars lose themselves in generality
And will flame out in distinct preeminence
Ah but when and when
The Bacchantes on the Ed Sullivan Show
The Suffragettes the child crusaders
What’s needed is an epidemiology of culture
Where did I get that benign cyst
Of medium to large size

Is that what it’s for
Just to pass the time away
Is that why uncle went to war
And got shot down in a B-17
While father-in-law escaped with his life
They were worthier gentlemen
Though they did not choose their lot
For the next generation to enjoy
Their extruded snacks
And episodes of Friends
The latest devices
And unknown modes of being
Poetry butters no parsnips
So I guess I’m glad
They’re not poems any more

I seem to have ignored the great problem
I seem to have misread the tenor of the times
I seem to have overlooked the universal grievance
But more than one injustice makes the claim of universality
Different constituencies nurse differing ancient grudges
Each wound becomes a prized possession
And all insist that there is none worse than their own
But can you calibrate which evil is the worst
And nobody questions the accidental inherency
In cobbled language of the superlative
So like in function unto the future tense
That established panic fatality
So easy to say
What will be will be

And yet and yet
Is it not pointless to try to quantify suffering
And yet and yet
When infant mortality rates were higher than they are now
Did parents not grieve
How dare one pick at his minor wound
How trivial must a trauma be
To demand treatment with poems
Reader turn aside
Call them stomach pumpings
Call them violent purgations
Call them emetic constructions
Call them inexorable spewings
Of one who won’t allow another’s pain
To interrupt his own