Poems without Warning

“And in Braunschweig there are plans to build my cat piano.”

Novelists know better than anyone

How insufferable are poems of ruin,

And the short-fiction masters know better

Than the finest Carlos Argentino

The dreary weight of sodden catalogues

And epic descriptions under the stairs.

Behold the territio realis

Of a text of literary lyrics!

Only poems can be so bad and useless,

Can accumulate bigger drifts of crap

Than old snow in dark cities fond of pets,

Can fill such toxic lakes of thoughtless sludge,

And why? Because poems are alchemical

And alchemists want the impossible,

Willingly poisoning benefactors,

Emperors, themselves, and the future minds

Of fiction specialists who will create 

Garish fantasies in fat trilogies

To spellbind the dreams of readers who hate,

Quite naturally, poetry’s alchemy.

It’s not an art, friends. It’s not a science.

It’s a seance, and you’re the ghosts summoned

To answer these question about heaven

And its nothingness yourselves. Which is hell.