How To Not Be A Poet

I am

what I am.

Just a brain rot

trying to be not.

Oh look, a rhyme

like gurgling chyme,

because poetry

is dysentery —

if the rhymes don’t fly,

you’re not a poet, sigh.

Says who?

Mr. Timbuktu.

Timbuktu who?

How do you do?

Is that rhyme enough

for your itching cough,

like a croaking frog

on a purple-brown wood log?

You must wonder now,

what color is that, and how,

well, who cares, and why?

It rhymes. Your opinions can die.

What an absolute farce,

you must tell yourself.

It’s nonsense verse.

A hundred books on that shelf

and yet, neither poetry nor poetics.

Your poet? Gotta die for a fix.

Maybe become a sandwich this time,

scatter coleslaw, pickles — rhyme on rhyme.

Maybe flap like a pancake, squeak like a mouse,

end up politely trapped in a teacup house.

Does it make all sense or none,

and yet somehow leave you undone?

Madness or genius, who can tell,

he who tied the cat to the goddamn bell.