Poetry Sucks
Even though you smile
As your son sings
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”
Into the microphone
& giggle about sitting
Brokenhearted
While you shit
In the bathroom stall
& pat the steering wheel
While “a hurricane of frowns”
Goes unnoticed as Capital Cities
Plays on your radio,
You insist that poetry sucks,
Even though personification
Emerges when you say so (though
You may not recall the term).
After all, an abstract term
Cannot literally suck
Nor do you mean to pass judgment
On its affinity to bedroom behaviors.
Rather, your bias is probably covered
In Frost from when your English teacher
Assigned “The Road Not Taken”
& flung “thees” & “thous”
From Shakespearean sonnets,
Leaving you reluctant to allow
“Those Winter Sundays”
To remind you of your folks,
Leaving you to ignore “A Blessing”
From James Wright, leaving you
To wonder day after day about love
When reading “Couple Sharing a Peach”
Would take less time than three “tweets”
From some twenty-something twerking twat.
What a shame. Granted: I can think of
A poem or two that suck (& they were
Probably mine), & some poetry does suck,
But to say all poetry sucks is to dismiss
A branch of writers that, with succinctness,
With keenness, somehow manages
To inspire ticker-tape parades
For patriots of no specific country
Whenever verse may vicariously
Convey Derek Walcott’s Saint Lucia
Or awaken senses slumbering
From a cloud coverage of clichés.
For your sake, may you find
Even just one poem in your life
That makes you smile, that makes you
Sit in silence upon completion, or that
At the very least makes you recant
Those two words: “Poetry sucks.”