if I can be open
and honest
with you
if the gods
will let me speak
I'll remind myself
and my readers too
that I'm really
mild and meek
if the world
would come
and take my hand
if the animals and birds
would come and listen
they'd find me
sitting beside a tranquil stream
contemplating life
and hoping to peacefully
learn my lessons
Al Purdy
who was so darn wordy
he wrote
enough poems
to fill
an Ontario lake
unlike myself
although I feel
and stand
on my own two feet
I feel
I'm fairly sturdy
but simply
writing lines
and rhymes
and words
doesn't necessarily
a poet make
there are things
in this world
that make me
want to write
there are words
that seem
to come easy
if life
weren't such a struggle
often a difficult fight
I'd probably be
just another speechless muggle
all that poetry
filling my brain
sometimes
seems to pour down
from the crowning stars
and the frowning moon
and the passionate sun
if I wrote every jealous line
that ever came
to my zealous mind
I'd have paved
an intercontinental highway
from here to continental Beijing
I'd have built
my own great wall
even though
every small brick and informal stone
would be
an imaginary thing
perhaps
Al Purdy
and other great poets
had some special
god given skill
if I could write
some handsome
even valued poems
I'd feel
like I'd made that poetry grade
that places writers
even faceless poets
on a park pedestal
but in those traces of poetic light
I'm afraid
I won't
I doubt
if I ever will
it's like
this baseless morning
when I woke aching
from yet another half-baked dream
in my racing sleep
I was writing
poetry
about dripping
wet vaginas
quivering female orgasms
I wonder
where that train of thought came
excavations from those remote
unexplored chasms
then I realize
I've been swallowing
another crazy pill
I'm sure
the world
wouldn't be a safer place
if she actually came
and sat on my face
though her orgasms
might be loud
and thunderously shrill
if my mundane world
were a perfect poetic place
I'm fairly sure
she'd be here still
if Shakespeare
could read the abnormal words
that I informally write
the former Barde
would likely fall
into an open grave
with poor old Yorick
those three witches
with their bubbling cauldron
would chant some lordly spell
then they'd roundly toss me in
I'd end up
as a bent and twisted twig
in a barren nest
being sat upon
by a long legged crested stork
those two towers that fell
possibly would rise again
in that mythical place
called mystical New York
so those distant words
that I insistently write
those resistant poems
that I dream
are like all the holes
that I've dug
and consistently filled
over and over
again and again
they're all just remnants
some venting creation
of all my silly relentless work
just ill-kempt segments
figments of my dilly imagination

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