THE WRONG POEM

This is not your poem, Eliot, Pound, Shapiro.
This is not your poem, Teasdale, Frost, Ferlinghetti.
This is no poem of yours, dear Walt, dear Emily, dear Maya.

Mostly,

this is not a Kerouac poem
with its eye on the horizon, stumbling drunk
from a ditched Cadillac somewhere just west of convention.
This is not a Ginsberg poem
flush with outrage and happy to shock the mundanes
with news of the most sensible things in the world.
This is not a Snyder poem, clinging to a mountain
wearing a tiny hat. Not a Corso poem, grand thug holler,
a diPrima poem slipping past the boys into the front row,
and it could never be a Kaufman poem, because nothing can be that isn’t already.

This poem smells like a scorecard in a gutter.
This poem slides a video under the teller’s window and withdraws the meager change.
This is not a recording, a television show, a commercial for its own last rites.

This poem eats scraps and makes sense.

This poem doubles back upon itself and tries to become a world
where a drunken mountain can fall on a car
and a cranium licked with fire shines cat’s eyes from within.
This poem wants to be
the psalm that rises when something that has not mattered becomes holy.

I will never be a writer until this poem is done.
I will never be a poet until I do not make another poem
about another poem
for as long as I live.

THE WRONG POEM

This is not your poem, Eliot, Pound, Shapiro.
This is not your poem, Teasdale, Frost, Ferlinghetti.
This is no poem of yours, dear Walt, dear Emily, dear Maya.

Mostly,

this is not a Kerouac poem
with its eye on the horizon, stumbling drunk
from a ditched Cadillac somewhere just west of convention.
This is not a Ginsberg poem
flush with outrage and happy to shock the mundanes
with news of the most sensible things in the world.
This is not a Snyder poem, clinging to a mountain
wearing a tiny hat. Not a Corso poem, grand thug holler,
a diPrima poem slipping past the boys into the front row,
and it could never be a Kaufman poem, because nothing can be that isn’t already.

This poem smells like a scorecard in a gutter.
This poem slides a video under the teller’s window and withdraws the meager change.
This is not a recording, a television show, a commercial for its own last rites.

This poem eats scraps and makes sense.

This poem doubles back upon itself and tries to become a world
where a drunken mountain can fall on a car
and a cranium licked with fire shines cat’s eyes from within.
This poem wants to be
the psalm that rises when something that has not mattered becomes holy.

I will never be a writer until this poem is done.
I will never be a poet until I do not make another poem
about another poem
for as long as I live.