If I talk self-consciously as a poet in my poems,
earning disdain from the ‘neutral observer’ school,
I reply: this strategy makes me no less a man.
I’m a poet, after all. I will do it because I can.
Meanwhile Seamus Heaney, in his fat flesh,
observes the thatch-work and the mud.
Poetry in the mid-twentieth century landed with a thud.
Shelley was routed. Sexy poets only did it
behind wax-works erected by T.S. Eliot.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning couldn’t win
surrounded by a male homosexual grin.
O mama bring it home!
to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
The poet’s mad. He took a little yellow pill.
Don’t be anything but a poet, poet.
Since I remember, I may offend.
Because I can, I will.