“Marianne Moore wrote to me the following comment that has served me well ever since: ‘Protest is no match for ardor. . .Your poems have the gift of praise.’”
— Laurence Lieberman
In his book Team of Vipers, Cliff Sims writes that Trump, in front of visitors, would press a red button on his desk that he called the nuclear button. “Not sure what to do, guests would look at one another with raised eyebrows. Moments later, a steward would enter the room carrying a glass filled with Diet Coke on a silver platter, and Trump would burst out laughing.”
I’m glad I’m a poet. I won’t kill anyone
with poor crafting of a poem or one
they don’t understand. “Measure twice, cut once”
the carpenter says, since they can’t word process
timber cut too short, or granite when it breaks.
One day a nurse might grasp the wrong vial,
in haste forget caution and not double check
then leave a corpse on the hospital bed,
but if I move too fast and full of hubris
I birth a premature poem, no one will die.
When I deign to send off email
with incomplete poems, it’s not a mistake
that will end the world as when megalomania
unfurls its vile head; no president will push
“The Button” if my final stanza goes missing.
No editor will worry or scurry for cover
when they open my mail, nor think they’re
on the brink of destruction when all verbs
are passive, or I write from multiple voices
or hide my essential truth.
No one will send a card and flowers
when I forget all rules both good or bad
said by poets of the first caliber like Moore,
Rilke, Oliver, or Hirshfield, or proposed
by other poets that history erased.
I don’t believe in war and that’s not
a gun I’m totin’, so Barry McGuire can relax,
no need to keep the score or sweat
or fear when all the world is in a grave
with no one to save, when I write a poem.
My poems may not shine with Moore’s gift of praise
or include the mystery that Bishop advises,
or rise to the level of a Pushcart Prize.
But my poems will never raise alarm
down on the farm, from tariffs imposed
My poems may not shine with Moore’s gift of praise
or include the mystery that Bishop advises,
or rise to the level of a Pushcart Prize
or Best of Net. But my poems will never
raise alarm on the farm, from tariffs imposed.
My poems may not shine with Moore’s gift of praise
or include the mystery that Bishop advises,
or rise to the level of a Pushcart Prize.
But my poems will never raise alarm
down on the farm, from tariffs imposed
or the threat of annihilation when bombs rain down.
The force my poems seek is centripetal and kind.
My message is never derision, although some days
I plead my case to be let alone to atone my sins
and rather, get back to dancing.
I do not burst out laughing after making a threat,
nor tread the dark web in search of destruction.
I pine for inspiration like Dickinson pines, and
do my best to set ego aside—but
there’s fat chance of that.
“No spare parts,” Ted Kooser says.
I could go on, but my reader I’ll release:
I’m grateful that my muse comes almost every day
as I search for poetic aréte—best: some have heard
and some will hear my plea for peace.
