New Poets

New Poets

Most poets are terrible bores

And now they've tossed away

The rhythm and rhyme that gave them charm.

What have they to say?

They ditch the laws of language

And make themselves unique,

Each at Kafka's carnival

An ostentatious freak.

In an effort to be odd

(“Poetry's a game”),

They break the cookie cutter,

And all come out the same.

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Phantoms

So sweet to wake and find the fear

Was nothing but a dream,

The contretemps a fantasy,

The faux pas an illusion,

Sleep the mother of illusions,

Art, imagination,

Softly reigns above the sea

Where goodness goes to die.

On the shore a thousand snakes

Slither from the ocean.

Children cry and mothers faint.

But what do fathers do?

Had Romeo a looking glass

In the catacomb,

And Juliet had fogged it breathing,

They would be alive.

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