Confessions of an Easy Triolet
I'm an easy triolet,
but it kind of makes me sad
when I overhear folks say
I'm an easy triolet -
sure I like to tease and play
with two twists to make a bad
and uneasy triolet,
but it kind of makes me sad.
The Amanuensis
A shadow-poet must accompany
each one of us, a wit, a twit, a bit
of what it takes to make an awkward fit:
this amanuensis dogs us, painfully.
Somewhere, out there, out in eternity,
a moving cursor writes, and having writ
a sentimental, tender piece of shit,
reveals itself to be the real me.
Teach a Man to Write
Give a man a poem, they say,
and he will read it through the day;
but teach him meter and some rhyme,
and see how he, in little time,
fights sleep to write, and with first light
makes coffee, then will re-recite
the gibble-gabble that he scrabbled
at all night: what he once babbled
somehow forms a half-defined
and vague, but artfully designed
melange of words he’ll stir, then stuff
with metaphors, until enough
is there to fester, seethe and cook.
Oh Christ! Just give the guy a book!
For Anthony Hecht
Wheezerly, geezerly
Cantor the poet, he
hit on a dry spell and
couldn't write shit.
Finally, he sleazily,
double-dactylically,
twiddled and twaddled and
broke out of it.
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