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)