Art history matters. New Master’s degrees
Lead to dull innovation in poetry. Please
Try to write us a poem where meaning is plain
And no MFA patriarch needs to explain.

a statue carved by Bernini/a plate of eggs painted by Velázquez  

Jane, dear Jane, you’re a porcelain idol.
The time has arrived for your verse to unbridle
Itself and reveal some slight traces of life;
We know you are smart, but that dull butter-knife
Of your poetry, smearing the references ’round
Is like Sylvia Plath/Gertrude Stein/Ezra Pound…

personal pan pizza with unlimited free toppings

Those weird sudden line breaks confuse us, in fact,
And the rarefied dishes you name-drop get cracked
On the floor of your poetry, leaving us shards,
Risking splinters for muses and mystified bards.

my arm breaks off  like the shell/of a freshly-filled cannoli

You deadpan in monotone, stunningly brave,
But your tortuous verses go straight to the grave.
Academic obscurantists murmur and nod
As they lower the corpse of your work in the sod…

carelessly thrown baby/a designer toilet cistern

You ought to re-frame and then tighten your lines,
So replete with Old Masters and euro-trash wines:

(…weirdly-named liqueurs in a Rococo  palais)

Why would you not, then, aspire to coherence,
Dismissing the need for white male interference?
Your verses cry out for some fatherly guidance
To try and make sense of your history of silence.

I’m off to Bermuda
While you’re up the creek!
I cruise like old money;
You float like a freak.

As you steer between rocks
In that ****** canoe,
You’re a maritime nuisance
Obstructing the view.

My luxury vessel
Steers clear of the sharks;
You paddle and fulminate,
Studying Marx.

Your dugout is leaking;
I’m greasing the skids.
The dividends pay out
to bankroll my kids.

My profits accrue
While you seethe at your bosses.
You rail at the system—
I minimize losses.

I cruise into port.
Our hotel is reserved…
Your bitter resentment
Means dinner is served.

Departures are blissful;
We glide into harbors
And dine amidst hollyhocks
Under the arbors.

The banquet is served:
An idyllic location—
But you merely murmur
In disapprobation.

So scratch my maid’s Tesla
(or blow up a dealership…)
Rattle your chains
While insulting my captainship.

I’m by the pool—
You can splash in your gutter.
I’ll leave you a tip
For some bread with your butter.

You’re clearly, clearly not a poet, Frank;
More a symptom of modernist sickness.
Inflict no further such rambling thickness
Upon your readers. Here it is point-blank:
Beat-up prose scribblers’ quaint observations
May charm their author—but bore us to tears.
Dull poems age poorly. The passing years
Condemn them as quirky obfuscations.

Your buddy Ashbery: another dud,
Remembered by Department Heads, at best:
Abstract expressions that fall with a thud.
Bury them in a chap-book with the rest
Of the beatnik bards, whose typing careers
Only confirm our worst poetic fears.

Deserving all reviling, loathing, curse;
To be an art critic-- can it get worse?
Imagine appearing before the Lord,
In Christ's own kingdom, God's glory restored:
The One you ignored now judges your soul.
Your life is reviewed, opened like a scroll—
He looks through your motives, your soul, and heart.
Did you have faith?   Well... I wrote about Art.

Perhaps there exists something even worse...
Worse than atheist critics (and my verse):
Scribes who are devoted to Rock and Roll,
Rap, R & B, Pop in part or in whole.
Condemned by their works and their words alone:
The drivel they scribble for Rolling Stone
Must be answered for on the Judgement day
(Which none of them believed in anyway.)