Poem on poetry
“Not a Poet”
I am no Poet.
Poets are monoliths of voice
that loom over us in the tall silence of anthologies.
Graves walked over
with morbid fascination and soulful feet,
worshipped in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster.
Poets are last-names-only
Lives long gone, full
of pain and heartbreak that always took them
too early; as if we ever say
“He timed it just right.”
If they still live, the lucky bastards
remain poets. They have not passed
the Capitalizing Induction Ceremony yet.
Until graduation they scribble lines fruitlessly,
unread until fever waltzes breathlessly and sweeps them away,
or they are lucky enough to couple a comma
and “Prize winning Poet” to the end of their name
like a shiny red caboose.
It seems to me that to be a Poet
I must first contract a disease;
From a prostitute while living
on the street, or from a courtesan hired to creep
up the servant’s stairs and meet me
in my long misused eighteenth bedroom.
Tuberculosis from a brother helped
Keats’ fame, or I can hope for a Shelley drowning
in a fabulous tourist destination.
And I must find a woman to break my heart.
Any one will do- married, invalid, disinterested, dead.
She must only be unavailable
so that I can write of cruel Maud Gonne-ishness;
of eight year old Beatrices’ that die young
and marry another.
I am not a Poet
and I’m hoping to keep it that way.
The most famous last-name-only Bremner
will be a Scottish footballer
best known as a short Leeds captain-
vocal, with a rousing temper.
I am no Poet.
Poets are monoliths of voice
that loom over us in the tall silence of anthologies.
Graves walked over
with morbid fascination and soulful feet,
worshipped in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster.
Poets are last-names-only
Lives long gone, full
of pain and heartbreak that always took them
too early; as if we ever say
“He timed it just right.”
If they still live, the lucky bastards
remain poets. They have not passed
the Capitalizing Induction Ceremony yet.
Until graduation they scribble lines fruitlessly,
unread until fever waltzes breathlessly and sweeps them away,
or they are lucky enough to couple a comma
and “Prize winning Poet” to the end of their name
like a shiny red caboose.
It seems to me that to be a Poet
I must first contract a disease;
From a prostitute while living
on the street, or from a courtesan hired to creep
up the servant’s stairs and meet me
in my long misused eighteenth bedroom.
Tuberculosis from a brother helped
Keats’ fame, or I can hope for a Shelley drowning
in a fabulous tourist destination.
And I must find a woman to break my heart.
Any one will do- married, invalid, disinterested, dead.
She must only be unavailable
so that I can write of cruel Maud Gonne-ishness;
of eight year old Beatrices’ that die young
and marry another.
I am not a Poet
and I’m hoping to keep it that way.
The most famous last-name-only Bremner
will be a Scottish footballer
best known as a short Leeds captain-
vocal, with a rousing temper.