The poets are too grim.
Too somber, too solemn.
Too serious for a world
That's bound to spit them out.
Programmed for defeat,
With their pessimistic vision
And their bouts with mental illness,
And the way they cut the gristle
From the bone of life.
Exposing the bare bones of it all.
They spend their whole lives sawing away,
Exposing the raw truth,
Digging down to the bone,
Living by the razor's edge,
And they take the little meat
They've collected
And they examine it -
For it is this kind of stuff
That entire empires are built upon,
Entire lives are shaped by.
It is this that the rest hungrily consume,
Piece by piece,
And they chuck away the bone.