Thursday, March 28, 2013

Poet (Poem)



Poet

All the poetry has been written
already.
All the couplets have
coupled.
All the rhymes made.
All the imagery set.
All the beats beaten to death.

And I ask myself,
what am I to do here.

I will write no sonnets.
Shakespeare won by
just a couple hundred years.
Romances and ideal love
its best left Rosetti
and Shelley.

Not in images but in
words, said William.
But my dear doctor,
how will I ever say what I feel

if all the words have been taken already?

I am no Eliot, nor shall I ever be.
Frost escapes me.
Ginsberg eludes me.
Plath is way too dark
anyway.

The stone has been cast
and it has been eroded by a
millenia of single letters.
A, B, C. . .

What am I doing here?
I should have been an engineer.

Or a painter.
A painter can mix colors, make
them new.

But what about me?
Recycled isn’t new.
The cliché is not a work of
art.

Only the first really wins,
the second just follows behind.
And wishes he had tried harder.
Just a little.
Maybe a push.

Bring me refreshing,
and I shall give you
something written a century ago.

I should have been a doctor,
Right William?

Or is it just me?

(2013)

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