Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
They said that poetry was dead
because most of its superstars
were similarly indisposed.
But they never figured on you
and they never figured on me
to breathe some life back
into that exquisite corpse.
So fix me a salad, Caesar,
for I come to praise poetry--
not to bury it.
Poetry works for the way we live today.
It's bite-sized and makes for
a handy snack, when even the
Cliff Notes version of War and Peace
is bound to give us indigestion.
Prose stands on the corner
and waits for the bus.
Poetry glides by in a pink Cadillac convertible.
Prose beats around the bush
for chapter upon endless chapter.
Poetry says get to the point, SUCKAH,
I haven't got all day!
(If you hold your breath waiting
for the epiphany in prose,
you WILL turn purple.)
A poem has weight--
either heavy or light--
and a poem has depth,
having welled up from somewhere
deep inside you.
You can tell by the way
a poem sits upon the page
whether it's something you
want to sit with.
Poetry is highly individualistic--
no two snowflakes, and no two poems
about snowflakes are exactly alike.
Failed poetry, at the very least,
assists in perfecting one's
trash basket set shot.
Here is a sure-fire formula
for making a poem...
On a sheet of white paper
place several black dots
at random and varying
lengths from one another.
The dots are now your periods.
Connect the dots with words
and you have a poem.
Many of the world's most treasured
works were created in just this manner!
It is incumbent upon the poet
to tell the truth--even when
his truth never really happened--
and even bad poetry is good
when compared with a political speech.
As Gregory Corso said,
"Poetry is the opposite of hypocrisy."
And that's the truth.
