A poem should be heavy metal
worn as armor when the world hurts.
Should be a jangly guitar arpeggio
draping the highway or blue jay pecking apart
a robin’s egg, crisp blue fragments split with red.
A poem should be a Lisa Frank unicorn
vomiting rainbows who makes you ask:
how do I continue to do what I hate
day in and day out, and then answers
“Bitch, one day you’re going to grow wings
so stop screaming into the 22nd century.
Get nasty, mechanize the messy.
Reinvent your pussy into a box of butterflies.”
Because if a poem isn’t god’s tooth
tonguing you for gold then it’s only a half moonwalk,
only a date with the toilet and last night’s chardonnay.
A poem should feel like an encyclopedia
chewed up by stray dogs behind a Tiger Mart.
Seductive as a saint with truck driver hands.
Should glint like a prayer made of bodily fluids,
make you want to burn all your clothes,
eat yourself alive, smother your heart
and say: I've been searching
for the blues my whole damn life.
2021
Regular
Contemporary
Ars Poetica
Humor & Satire
Allusion
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference
Dialogue
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie
Metaphor
a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”