No more poetry. Not until I know what it is. H two oh of water? Or C oh two of fizz? Has it a tactile, scientific existence? If so, exactly how is it scientific? The moment I ask, the answer comes: Poetry is experiment. All existence is experiment. I sleep in my bed scientifically. For my wife, the TV is mother. She falls asleep to it. The TV must be on. She will have her TV. But look what I did. I solved poetry. Those who have more will get more--- and by their superiority go insane. The bookie fixes the NFL. And with our lives, CEOs make even bigger bets. Life is not quite understood because of God behavior by extraordinary wealth, done secretly. Poetry has lost to spectacle and conspiracy--- which it once was. Remember Dante? Rome's empire died over centuries, gradually. Point to a map. That's history. English replacing the Italians. Shakespeare, the poet, today, has no peer. Is it any surprise today the globe is English seen by Chinese eyes? My fantasy of an Asian girlfriend is the great English experiment coming to an end.
Notes: There is nothing more abhorrent to us than a poem with footnotes---they are superfluous to poetic achievement. The true poem does not require pedantic filigree. Hasty remarks such as these, however, are occasionally warranted when the zeitgeist is especially noisy and can be heard even within the most solemn sanctuary of artistic meditation. We wrote our poem at approximately 3:13 this morning (we were born at 3:13 in the afternoon). It probably took 13 minutes to write the poem down; the opening, "No more poetry. Not until I know what it is" had come into my thoughts earlier in the day and stayed there---the poem having been almost abandoned since in my head I didn't like the "fizz" followup, but I reflected "No more poetry" had sufficient ironic force to make an effort at further composition worthwhile. The line on Rome losing its empire slowly was inspired by something Putin said in his now most famous interview. The NFL and CEO portions need no explanation---more and more fans believe the NFL is fixed. Governments and corporations gaslighting and influencing millions is trending---whether one wears a tinfoil hat or mocks the tinfoil hat with a tinfoil brain. While writing this poem, my wife was sleeping on the couch in front of the television which had woken me up---or perhaps it was the dogs, I'm not sure. The line "I sleep in my bed scientifically" does not refer to an expensively designed mattress but merely to the fact that all human activity is scientific, just as all existence is experiment. Many call poems on poetry weak and amateurish, or even worse, didactic; I beg to differ---this prohibition deprives the writer of his greatest weapon: metaphysical self-awareness. The British Empire (modern) replacing the Roman Empire (ancient) is crude but true enough---the "Asian girlfriend" can exist as an idea on many levels. American is obviously hiding within "English"---whether America will be true to its founding principles or merely become part of the English colonizing one remains to be seen. The comparison between wife merely watching TV and the "superior" poet who meditates on, and "solves" poetry may seem odious and arrogant, but the poem being true to its flawed self could not say this any other way. I think I have said enough. Puto dixisse satis.
