In Praise of Sheetrock


    
          "I can’t bear to think, the thought’s so maudlin,
          That folks prefer poetry to dear Wystan Audlen"
                              --Anon
As I walked out one evening,
     Walking on George Bush Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
     no, wait a m-m-moment,--
And then went down to the ship, set
Needle to groove, forth on    a child
     asked me, what is the grass, bringing
it to me in great rolled bundles of
the American Book Review       tired of
those phoney poets whose verse doesn’t
tell you what you need to know?
     take the everyday, suburban, lyric sublime--please!
(excuse me sir, sub-Poconos gags are unwelcome
in this establishment--boy my arms are tired!
but seriously, folks the heron at
daybreak, epiphany of girl beside the road     blow it
out your ass an aggressive, faltering, but thoroughly
unconfused approach to little more than
     a boy on a girl’s bike, groceries on a handlebar
basket         I wanted to write a poem that even
you couldn’t understand, but I’m too fucking
stupid         how does one work the verb "impact"
into a Petrarchan sonnet? with a crowbar
     I wanted to unleash that burning, festering
volcanic energy into a form whose balanced
measures would teach the word to sing
          but I’d lost the condom in my wallet
     I think free verse, on the whole, is like
playing tennis with a racket up your
bum       oh, Mr. Meese, did that whining
little bastard upset your brunch?  hanging’s
too good for 'im, let’s make the cocksucker
do an oral report on the primary exports of 
sixteen midwestern states     are you being
served, folks?      Dear R, I found your latest
slim volume of thoughtful and expressive
verse exceedingly useful (could you have the
next one simply printed on toilet paper?)
     for all of his wit and erudition, Jonathan
Swift’s delight in scatalogical detail has
disturbed more than one of the academy’s
most prominent turd-eaters         some words
are never used in a poem:  for instance,
one would never rhyme "lute" with "Butte"
     Dear S, perhaps your appeal to higher
authority would be more readily accepted
if you simply had your fucking teeth
removed      examining "the growth of a 
poet’s mind" is far less interesting than
checking out his genitals (easier to
get ahold of, and famous for producing
well-wrought urine)           missing from Holmes’s brilliant
and sensitive biography, this reviewer
regrets, is any account of Coleridge’s difficulties
in getting the elaborate "Piss Off, Tottenham
Blue" tattoo removed          anal intercourse is still
outlawed in some seventy-two states, but
we’ll make an exception in your case
     thank you for allowing us to review your poems
for brackets our magazine here close
brackets, but we adhere to a policy of only
publishing work that excites us either
formally or thematically, or by poets
whose HIV tests have turned out 
negative     blue day like few I’ve seen,
or few         I’ve written about   your request
for an extended credit line has been denied:
please drop this letter, bend over, and 
squeal like a pig     so you want to be 
a significant contemporary poet, well listen
now to what I say    Mona Van Duyn
we love you 
          (please) get up!