(poetry’s posthumous voice boils pacific)
Have you ever seriously considered,
Meditatively cud-chewed on gristle covered shank bone,
What might happen if poetry ran its course,
The last imaginative metaphor having been written,
That fateful day when the sword
Becomes mightier than the pen? Have you!
Would such an event prove cataclysmic,
Or would it merely be the silent sound
Of flatulence breaking the wind?
Would it be headline news
Or would it be buried somewhere in the obituaries
Behind the Want-Ads?
“Poetry, a 39 year old hermaphrodite
suffered a massive myocardial infarction
while addressing a crowd of circus lovers,
a carnivorous conclave of cardinals,
a flock of frocked obsessive compulsives behind closed doors.”
Maybe this event would make the ‘Personals,’
“SWF seeks SWM poetry lover
who loves to go down in the moonlight at midnight
during the monsoon season in Madagascar,”
or some such thing as that
with the emphasis on the significance of poetry,
its metaphysical effects on the lunar tides
and the ozone layer’s exponential ooze.
Maybe this event would make the Sports Page:
“Poetry strikes out on three low fast ones;
his Louisville Slugger never left his shoulder
and the bases were loaded in the bottom of the ninth!”
Hyperbole, you say! I don’t think so; when was the last time
You feasted on a good bowl of tripe,
The marble laden stomach of a slop fed swine
Or siphoned pickled pork from between the pig’s knuckles?
Or maybe it really would be the final sunset.
Our sun, the source of warmth, light, life and energy
Seen disappearing with resounding finality,
The agonizing sound of someone’s drowned voice
Boiling the Pacific.
