To my left a girl
spoke daftly of Charlotte Bronte,
to my right a boy
butchered cantos out of Dante.

I've offered these kids
pieces written to pass the time;
short, plotless fictions
and epigrams that  rhyme.

"Where's your sense of plot?",
cried a free-verse poet in black.
"Form can be a cage",
advised a boy whose eyes screamed Hack!

"My poems occur
cerebrally, " I explained;
"when reading my shorts
think opposites being strained."

They seemed unable
to deal in abstract thought. It was
incredibly sad.
This is what modernity does.