Note To Self
 
 
Sense the world — it seems an easy mission,
deciphering it in rhyme and meter,
just don't be vulgar, that's amateur,
so euphemize carefully in revisions,
 
though it's chic in limerick submissions,
but you'll never be a star, you're amateur --
without panache, just lumpy lines with meter,
though rhythms of your heart don't need revision,
 
so write them like drums when earth is still,
deleting bitter thoughts, finding fault
in those with less artistic sense
 
who never get your poems, but still,
you speak them from the heart, it's not your fault
to you they make a world of sense.
 
 
 


19 Lines
 
 
It's the coming of attention deficit—
I can't read long poems anymore.
I thought it was something you were born with.
 
At about line 19 I think, this is it,
I'm done with this meandering one for
now.  Perhaps it's the poem that has the deficit,
 
substanceless, or I'm not good at
getting the obscurity, the ghosted metaphor--
wow, you got me.  But I have less patience with
 
other things too — hearing a mouth
say more than a sentence or
two. Am I going deaf?  Is it
 
the first rot of my wit?
When are we ready for the head to wear
out?  Maybe my blossoming trouble with
 
anything long is like the death
of caring who is playing and what's the score
or the country's current deficit.
Is that something we were born with?