There is a place where this poem begins and where it ends
and a place where this poem,
which is mine, becomes yours.
I am sad that intellectually, this is all a poem can be
and yet this simple truth is the heartbeat of my poetry.
Intellectuals! What is our legacy?
Tourism that misses everything: another mindless day along the Seine.
Trillions in debt. Far Side Cartoons. Slasher films.
The over-intellectualization of poetry.
Childlessness. The arrogance of crude media authority.
I wish my poem could fight in the streets of Iran, block out the scarves,
but it can’t. We all want the same things until we don’t.
I’m sorry for this intellectual division, I really am.
You peg me for right-wing.
Oh this silly, unraveling thing.
If I must write against the poem, I am willing.
No more beer swilling.
There was something I learned from Plato on art:
to not trust it. To see its duplicity simply—
that we might get to the great and modest heart.