The agents 
on the road I travel
won’t punch my ticket,
though I offer them
the posted fare
of my poems.

What I do
is now, apparently,
invalid.

I’ve done it
all my life and now
I am not good at it,

or I never was
and no one said so,

or all I’ve done
is a mistake.  

It might be true —
I might have lost it —

I don’t match 
the demographics,
says one commenter.
I don’t pursue
the right goals,
says another.  
What I make
is false,
says another,
and does not count.

It’s likely past time
for me to pass, then?  
Time almost
to go and not resist,
gentle, etc., into the night
good or not;
turn off the light
on my writing desk
whether I go easy or hard
because this ain’t,
it just ain’t,
working. 

Ah,
say my poems,
buck up,
they’re looking for
suckups, and all they know
is their own
limitation.  
We can’t even see
a horizon
and we’re still on the hunt, 
are we not?

They’ll go on, my poems,
those cocky bastards,
with or without me,
without or with honors, 
validations, labels;
what I need now
I needed more long ago,
have gotten already,
at least in part.

As for the ticket punchers…

they stand there at a gate
that isn’t on a road
and there are broad open plains
on all sides…

I think I’ll just
go around.