The Flea (http://www.the-flea.com) has disappeared. Here are 2 of my poems from it
Lost Letters "Too staid", critics said, "too sad. Poems shouldn't mean but be". So must the work of men like me who chose Jarrell's hose or Heaney's hoe become sparse, hard to parse as it disappears up our collective arse? Must we haunt palaces, places where thought paces in ermine? Can't we swing and sing as if prose were a sin? I know just what to do now there's no Eliot daring to preach about eating a peach. We should each seek the best public forum and form for expression, slowly learn our craft, win words' trust, earn a good ear, not beg a grant to rant like a rat on a sinking readership. Their stuff's just prose in a pose. Poe's turning in his grave. While stolid, solid poets slid into obscurity they've zoomed like human cannon-balls into the canon, ousting poor anon. Mon frère, they'll explain their free verse to you for a fee, but I'll never cast pearls before swine, serving wine to win friends. Let them eat cake. I'll earn my bread, read their books, always see red. (each line has a triple of words with lost letters – e.g. staid/said/sad) |
Wordbound Today I've a diction addiction, marooned in maroon, alone without interest, my celibate celebration of innocence in no sense pure, the therapist, the rapist all ready already trying together to get her to swing, sing, sin in- side me, leaving me sentenced, solitary, so literary. Today I'm a pathologist studying roads not taken, aching for rumourtologists to break the news to me, and for wellwishers to lower their buckets as a sign of respect, dyslexia my only hope of escaping from the word to the world. |
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