I admit it
I like Shakespeare and Keats
I also like marijuana
And cocaine
But that’s too dangerous for anybody to mess with
I gave up drinking
After forty years of snoring and puking
So what I like and what I approve of
Are two different things

On the whole however
My attitude toward Will and John
Is approbatory
Their personalities are part of it
To the limited extent we know them
Shakespeare the dramatic poet
Worked in an era long before the time
When Keats’s frenemy Byron
Made self-exposure fashionable

Keats worked around to freeing himself
From the hegemonic I
Even trying his hand at blank verse epic
He wrote maybe two hundred poems
In his short life
Of which only ten or so
Are world-historically significant
Which is a hell of a lot more
Than most poets can claim

Shakespeare’s plays require triage
A dozen of them are negligible
Comedies that must have had currency once
Ranters that confuse bloodbath for tragedy
Another dozen are as we say
Significant for the world
Though in one of the best Macbeth
The Bard had a helping hand
The middle third are interesting but unlovely

Weed I can go a year without
Cocaine and booze are gone for good I hope
The great thing about poetry
Is that you can carry it through secret passages
Especially now when
So shaken as we are so wan with care
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards
But on the viewless wings of poesy