Rain will rain.
Your poem depicts suffering in vain.
Nor is anyone good
Because your poem tells them to be good.
And you always knew:
It’s impossible for a poem to be new.
Every poem is a failure—
You can’t judge a poem
By asking: if what the poem says
Comes to pass, what’s the result?
Nor can you judge a poem
On its journey—amazed
At vocabulary or the audacity—
Since a poem never succeeds
In the middle of reading it.
If heavy metal accents
(I am thinking of poets like Eliana
Vanessa or Kent Johnson)
Explode, the landscape’s damage
After the poem is over
Accuses the poem still playing;
The damage happens to you,
Finally, but since every poem fails—
All that rage in a jar—do you hear what I’m saying?
Peep. A tiny noise when you open the jar
Is just going to make you laugh.
This is what those poems are.
Never mind. Forget it. Poems fail
Whether or not their
Success were to hurt
You. Wheels spinning in the dirt,
And yesterday, in the snow—
Notes for a poem. A poem
Should just be beautiful. I don’t know.