Poetry

You can’t be beautiful in poetry anymore, not serene or
magical, no more song and (or) dance. Nobody’s been lovely
since Neruda, nobody can fall in love or fall in anything
but garbage cans or down rabbit holes or from airplane
emergency exits on your birthday or fiftieth anniversary
of your dead cat’s adoption. You can get hit or shot and now,
even fucked, but we are not electric anymore. Babies can’t die
unless it’s funny, Jesus can only show up if he’s going
on a date with your step-mom’s sister in a Bon Jovi t-shirt
that he bought at Goodwill and your parents’ divorce will never
matter, unless you can tell me about it in one-syllable
words that including letters Q or X. The men who taught me
to write have died, all failed for saying too much. There are no more
bright stars or fair faces (unless they are on clocks), no more
delight because poets know the best things in life are
cliché. I want to tell whoever decided I could not be beautiful
anymore in pure poetic monosyllabic imagery to
shove it up their ass. How’s this for poetry?