Kit Kelen #541 - travel advisory

541
travel advisory

then poetry went somewhere else
I should have seen it coming
(it's not like there's ever been a generation missed out)
I had thought it could go anywhere (silly sausage)

poetry had been warned
and still
it went through the market
where the music jeers
and all are mocked for thought
heat of that kitchen would down an ox
(kind you find at the restaurant end of the universe –
one of those 'eat me – drink me' cash cows)

all these years, I'd kept poetry close
that I might 'pass without let or hindrance'
I'd do impersonations too
as if I'd been Pessoa once

I had with me Sidney's passport of poetry
sadly the fuckers could no longer read
that's in some ways a saving grace
though it's
bum rap
you'll have to hear

I'd rather go naked, Yeats would say
but I kept on the poetry cloak
whatever they say it is now

till time and I'm done
I will find out where she has gone

there's where we've been warned not to go

that's a best not-destination
not even a stop on the way

I was convicted of all sorts of lacks
of conspiring with the reader
to make a little sense

but I broke out of their narrow gaol
and now I'm on the lam/b
(no, under – I'm dodging the boulders
Polymphemus threw)
with Phemius, who sings the tale

with poetry for wheels and for grease
golden apples, silver too
it's all poetry I hail