I must confess that a while ago,
I wanted to be a superhero, you know,
to blaze like a thousand suns and shout
hello, I’m here.

Yes, you're right, it was a bit pathetic, really,
but you see,  I was afraid of being
just another speck
in the swarm of time,
swallowed up and
insignificant.

So now I’ve changed, and
I just want to say
hello,  I love you.
Love is incredibly more
incandescent, iridescent and resplendent
than all that hero stuff and blind ambition
and all that exhibitionism.

Maybe my spandex suit was too tight in the crotch,
or whatever, but so what,
I now don't feel the need to be a superhero at all.
Yeah, so all of those old galaxies can spin around
and glow in the dark
and wheel through time
as much as they like,
because I’m doing just fine now,
simply being me, right here.

And anyway, love is much more fun
because love is when you don't have to
wear your underpants on the outside,
like all those superheroes.
Actually, and this is very logical,
because when you're a lover,
you don't have to wear any underpants at all.

Mike T Minehan

I must state right at the outset
that I’ve never actually been
on a female poet
or even underneath or inside one.
But I thought about this
seriously
at a poetry reading once
when a particularly sensitive
and gentle girl read her poetry
and I wondered how well
the delicacy of her ideas
and subtlety of her poem
would translate into
the carnal and profane.

It was sensuous to think about this
and savor some wine
with her afterwards.
I felt distinctly like
a priapic, dangerous Dionysius,
or a satyr sizing up a nymph.

But I licked my lips and
said I liked her poem,  
then I knocked off the wine instead.

I speak in praise of the *******, yes,
and as a male, I decline to be clandestine about this.
The reason I so admire the ******* is that it's the female's key
to being multiply *******, and frankly, I'm in awe of this.

You see, the male ***** can't compare
because, of course, it has a dual purpose.  
It wasn't put there just for bliss,
which is the only purpose of the *******.

Males must just resign
themselves to their dangling ganglia, the ****,
which is so easy to malign compared to the delicate paradigm
of the **** and its remarkable economy of design.

Now I realize that females may be suspicious
of my focus on their *******
but actually, I think it’s ingenious.  
My own discovery of this was serendipitous and propitious.

You see? Really, I’m envious of the *******
because it's indefatigable and delectable,
(I think she likes a little nibble),
and anyway, there’s not much point in trying to distinguish
between ******* and the *******.

So there's my poem to the little ****
with admiration and respect.
I speak in praise of the *******.
Truly. A gift for all of us.

I have this sobriquet,
some say,
of being a naughty poet.
But why should what’s there, underneath us,
be figuratively beneath us, and shouldn’t it
more frequently come between us?

That’s my ethos
about the penoth
and the clitoroth
and the propagation of the spethoth.

When I die,
bury me under a tree,
large and spreading,
so that I may give again to life
and be a home for breezes
and whatever birds
may please to make their home there.
Then climb the battlements
of my old and crumbling castle
in the air
and appreciate the spectacle
of a speck against infinity.

Go to my oak desk
and burn all love letters,
pure and singing though they are.
Let others learn love for themselves,
as I did.  It is best.

Then celebrate, inebriate.
Divide up my possessions
and sell a few to buy fireworks that burn
brilliantly and fast.
Raid my cellar, eat, drink, make merry and enjoy,
for tomorrow is unknown.

And when the revelers stagger home,
remember only that I loved incandescently and enjoyed.
Yes, there were futile crusades, furious fusillades and
wild charges against the windmills,
but I did love. Yes, desperately.
That's all.

So goodbye, my friends. Don't grieve.
Please believe that
the gift of love and
this scatter of words
is all I want to leave behind.
See - they flutter from that great tree
that stands against the blustering sky
out there, beyond the mist,
along the pathway to
forever.

They're a funny lot, some of these poets,
feisty feminists, dreamers, anti-money,
and even some who are very self-defecating
about themselves.
And then there's the literary, learned allusion lot,
and some who've got their eye on eternity, that's what,
and others who rub too much turps on the **** of their imagination.

But it's the long-winded poets who make me squirm,
and for god’s sake, give me a bottle of red wine when the ones
with blue-rinse hair get up to have their turn.
They're terribly nice, but they need an echidna
stuffed right up you know where - at least once, if not twice.

And give me another bottle of the red, even if it's rough,
or better still a whole case of that stuff,
just to protect me from those who bleed too much in poems.
Psychoanalytic stuff makes me paralytic
and I have to stifle groans.

But most of all, I like the poets with their tongues on fire,
the ones who lick lightening before they write
and who throw a sizzling poem down
like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

I like poems marsh mellow soft and bitter-sweet, too,
and those oozing with the juice. And if a poem's loud and flash,
so what? I like a bit of swagger, with shameless **** and ***.
And sometimes, I just like words that rhyme with licorice,
Dionysius, Priapus, Bacchus and preposterous!

Also, what the ****, a poem can even give offense.
Poets sometimes need to do this to stop indifference.
They call this poet's license, but really,
indifference is the only hell from which
us poets need deliverance.

******.  Come back,
you faithless little ****-tease, Muse,
you maddening author of my abuse.
Please don't amuse yourself this way.

I know it's love-hate,
de facto, inchoate.
But don't you know I seethe for seed
and writhe to write?

I love you, Muse.
There must be some mistake.
So end this wretched heartache
and for art's sake,
light my ******* fuse!

Mike T Minehan