Tag Archives: poem about poetry

Welsh Revival

DrunkAssDylan

Dylan Thomas, drunk-ass poet,
uncorked nouns, imbibed the verb;
downed six pints and thought about it
sitting unsteadily on the curb.

Winds of word unleashed in drink
filled to the full the poet’s sails . . .
although it tottered on the brink,
his drunken boat defied the gales.

Floating on wreckage to distant shores,
our boozy bard beheld the deep;
where whales spout forth their lyric stores
while the inebriate muses weep.

This postwar lush and lyrical fad,
was the biggest pint in the bar called Wales.
While not the worst, his verse was bad…
(but better after seven ales).

NOTE:  I wrote this after perusing A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which was a big yawn
and, to me, embarrassingly bad poetry.
But some of Thomas’ early verse is beautiful (in the eye of this beholder).
So I ALMOST  feel mean for scrawling this little ditty.
Interesting words about him HERE

Beatnik Disembarks from Bardo Plane

Ginsberg Burning

Once I hoped to write like Ginsberg—
but Allen Ginsberg went to hell.
His bolder Buddhist poetry glitters,
then opens like an empty shell.

In vain one searches for the pearl
within the lyric art he showed us.
Open wide his rotten oyster –
seek the center of the lotus.

Perverted lost Semitic soul,
lyrical ranter,  mind unhinged…
He celebrated sin and shame
while crew-cut culture cringed.

His beatnik aircraft took off fast,
flew into bardos of the damned
promising enlightenment—
but the cockpit was unmanned.

Stuff Poetry Hates:

Pseudo-Oriental visions
Haiku, Tanka, exotic terms
Vapid New Age vibe-transmissions
proliferating eastern germs . . .

Anarchistic thought collages
Existential lacerations
Nihilistic heart-massages
Incoherent lamentations,

Communism on a mission,
grievance-mongering, stewed in hate;
pounding Fascist fusion/fission
chanting harshly: ours the state,

Hymns to Gods who choked on vomit
undertaken in overdose;
rocks that never rose to comet
rolling . . . but ending comatose,

Hipster ironies, tongue in chic
Metro-wimps who feign the normal,
Redneck rantings up the creek
semaphoric, semi-formal,

matron’s maudlin observations,
motivational hypnosis,
(sentimental medications
offered prior to diagnosis),

coldly abstract neo-nonsense
read (by dullards) as cutting edge,
letters void of correspondence;
well-trimmed words’ linguistic hedge.

Climate whining (tried untrue)
with eco-prophecies warning doom,
Wiccans and tree-sprites trying to
undo the curse and lift the gloom,

Feministic tribal ranting,
Race-complaining, agitation,
GLBT gallivanting—
all are blights upon our nation.

Boring modernist excess,
(no longer daring, formulaic)
confounds—yet never can address
what’s wrong, and so becomes prosaic.

Lists like this are perhaps  the worst;
another symptom of our times:
we who are woefully unversed
in rhythmic complaining that rhymes.

To a Progressive Poet

Your poems read as staggered prose;
the rhythm of the words escapes you.
One assumes, un-mused, you chose
a free-verse prison to run into.

You are modern. And it shows
in lack of structure, meter, beat.
Your emperor, set free of clothes
meanders on unsteady feet

exposed as naked, fending blows
from anarch subjects bored to tears
by cryptic, existential woes
and dreary imagery. One hears

within the verbiage you compose
a load of godless free-form tripe.
The lyrical ebb achieves new lows;
the scent is somewhat over-ripe…

Flux Danger