When painters who paint about painting
meet writers who write about writing,
self-conscious redundancy
bordering lunacy
ends in esthetic in-fighting.

Such modernists, right about nothing
(mostly nihilists mad about something)
are so lost in the process
they vent all their excess
in metacognition:  dull writing.

You poets who muse about musing—
unaware you are reader-abusing,
provide a terrific
verbose soporific . . .
yet not of the reader’s own choosing.

I long for some sheer virtuosity
but I’m stifled by all the pomposity.
This dull erudition,
“sub-metacognition”,
is naught but artistic atrocity.

You thinkers who think about thinking
drag my spirit far lower than sinking.
What we want is a Word
which we haven’t yet heard . . .
so ’till then I’ll just drink about drinking.