Something Off-Beat

 

Enough of angry fixes, negro streets
incoherent poems and arrhythmic beats,
drug-addled mystics and feminized fools
who compose no further than breaking rules.
Junior Dadaists, after the fact;
dull poetry’s second, third, and fourth act.
Actual poetry exists for the page
and ought to be able to last an age.
Real poems are NOT composed on the tongue,
as are the ravings of the angry young.
Diarrhetic voidings, awash in words
that rain down upon the poetic herds
are not the same as life-giving waters
fit to refresh our sons and daughters.

Suck it up with your existential vacuum
from off the floor of that San Fran backroom.

 

 

PROMPT 28: try your hand at a meta-poem of your own
Meta-poem = a poem about poetry

METAPOETIC 2FORONE TODAY !

 

Bitter Poetaste in Mouth

Lightweight free-verse exploration,
withered ghosts and wisps of phrase,
breezy unamusing musings
barely raise

a titter, tear or lyric warning –
fail to reach a middling height;
then subside to shallow murmurs
(not quite).

Teenage existentialism
cryptic, dull confessional mush;
suitable for a poker-faced
unroyal flush.

Must you set this stuff in motion
fizzling through our universe:
half-bright comets leaving trails
of boring verse?

Incoherent thoughts meander
through your words like fish through nets
unable to ensnare your reader.
One forgets

whatever it was you started saying
(weirdly spaced, unpunctuated).
Could it be such thoughts are better
left unstated?

https://i1.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Comet-Hale-Bopp-29-03-1997_hires_adj.jpg

The Amazing Muses’ Amusing Mazes

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 purely 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.

Disabused of Muses

 

Poetry, you dazzled my eye
teased me with unearthly visions;
got me too high.

Primed my soul to fly to heaven
then marooned me upon the earth
sixed for seven.

You called across celestial shores
glowing in empyrean colors
then shut your doors.

Lost in your amusing mazes
I followed fast your golden thread
through dark phases.

Muse-abused and undelivered
my heartstrings wavered, stalled, then stopped—
arrows quivered.

Poetry, you’ve cheated on me;
winked and flirted, then escorted
Philosophy!

Spare me further cantos, curses,
keep your holy delirium,
unhinged verses…

On second thought, oh Lady cruel—
humiliate me. Lead me on.
(I’m still your fool.)

Dominatrix, queen of the word
for you I’ll suffer untold shame.
I’m undeterred.

RoxyMuse1

IMAGE CREDIT: 3bp.blogspot.com 
[Roxy Music album cover: For Your Pleasure 1973]

The Amazing Muses’ Amusing Mazes

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.