Anthony Madrid

WHOEVER WORRIES TOO
MUCH ABOUT BEING BELIEVED

 
SHALL I write the little platitude poem that will save somebody’s life?
I can no more write that poem than I can think rice into my bowl.

If GLAMOR’s the soul of poetry, then I say: Poetry, do your job.  We must 
Liberate the human love of licking boots . . .

Whoever worries too much about being believed will only end up lying.
In trying to persuade our parents, we forget everything we know. 

That suasion and credit are only the millionth part of the poet’s task.  
That poets lay their goldenmost eggs on stacks of rotting bricks.

The worst of them is in my house, corrupting my servants.  
At night, I hear her in the stairwell, hear her groaning with rude pleasure.

Oh, she’s a big hit with the ladies, this modern Artful Dodger!  With her 
Newsboy cap and her gallantry and her long-sleeve, war-eagle tattoos!

But the bruise on a fruit marks the spot where the biting teeth will turn back.
Yet, it’s not the teeth, it’s the MIND that relies on “voluptuous resistance.”

In better days, I called all infants “the crying people.”  I called
Christ “that Bedouin philosopher”; I shook my fist at the oncoming traffic . . . 

But now, the piston action in the cylinders is suffering a loss of pressure.
I can just barely open up my unoiled, mechanical wings . . . 

Oh, look! the monster is crying!  Come, we must dry his tears.
Let me go.  I wanna wipe his tears with my BOOT-SOLE.

ANTHONY MADRID lives in Chicago.  His poems have recently appeared or are
forthcoming in AGNI Online, Cincinnati Review, Forklift Ohio, LIT, Now Culture,
PANK, 6X6, Shampoo, and WEB CONJUNCTIONS.  The title of his manuscript is
THE GETTING RID OF THE THAT WHICH CANNOT BE DONE WITHOUT.