A Polite Request
I call on all older poets to kindly die,
on all the Greatest Generation schussing dust,
on all the crotchety Boomers stuffed into too tight,
too young dungarees in futility against the wrinkles
to generally step aside, take a dignified dose
of cyanide and make way for the young and the no-longer-
quite-so-young, those few in count but patient
in soul who have waited until the dawn
of middle age for a book, a book, our kingdoms
come, a book-or even a berth in the hallowed
galleys of academe. We're too aged to be pulling
your lattes anymore; you've milked
your connections, dug dry the groovies
of your whoreson hips. Now die.
You're bored with poetry anyhow, tired
enough to seep sentiment and senile
to the degree you believe any of this matters.
Let us, for once, for all, plumb the deaths
of this pointlessness, lose ourselves in lines too long,
the coffee-fog and wine-breath
of empty
self-promotion.