To Destroy Poetry

You can stuff it with images
Articulately honed,
That are nothing but mirages,
A mirror that’s been cloned.

Or Emo’s you’ll collaborate
To write with them of pain,
And in their tears you’ll masturbate
A weeping with the rain.

Or, you can stand on syllable
And measure every beat;
But then the rhyme is irritable
And only bloody feet.

Or, you could choose a mark, or theme,
That at its best is terse;
And use that tense to mark your dream
Of second-scribble verse.

Or, you could be a bland satire
Of all the poets blessed,
And think your worst is all their peer—
To hell with all the rest!

Or, you could tell us how to write
What’s only meant to mean,
Forgetting beauty—though in spite
Of all its blessed to been.

Or, you could limit poetry
To single, stringent form;
Forgetting then that all beauty
Was made before your born.

Yet, more than this, the maul of verse
(Whereby its truly dead)
Is surrender it to the curse
Of the: “Its all been said.”