Who wants to be a poet? I can tell you how.
Outside the Cologne Cathedral I sold a bunch of hash
And was able to party hard at Giza.
Most importantly, decide you are a poet,
Say you are a poet, write obscure poems no one understands. That’s how.
I asked Pablo, “why does contemporary art look like trash?”
He smiled. Then she asked, “I could be a poet?
There’s no art now.”
At Angkor Wat I found her hesitating, yet there was nothing
She was supposed to do. By noon I knew there would be a delay.
The whole choir wasn’t feeling well. I could not allow
The truth to get out. The Dome of the Rock was crossed off the list,
Machu Picchu, the Statue of Liberty, and then, my house.
She said, “Could anyone know that I could be a poet?
There’s no art now.”
Stonehenge, Persepolis, those shadows
Loom over every ambition we had.
There wasn’t anything contemporary
About what was backwards, or really considered bad.
There was a fledgling belief we had to cross
The river Yung Pung Kao.
“Cosmetics? Maybe. But
There’s no art now.”
Who would say something bad
About the Taj Mahal?
I got in trouble as a dad
For being too critical. I had
To be a parent. Poetry, no.
Far from the Lotus Temple,
In a bad rain storm, she voiced
Silently the word, “wow.”