how could I not love you,
when you wrote of death, while others
courted coy flowers--I know you were not
a comely creature, and if you were Aphrodite,
perhaps you would have been love lathered
on cold Amherst nights, though I
suspect you would not have heard
a fly buzz when you died, for you
would not have been listening
for such a beatific symphony

You were the most important poem I ever read.
I didn't have to pretend to understand you
like Emerson
But I memorized you all the same,
like Frost.

Writing poems about poetry
Is problematic, you see.

Poetry is subjective
Changes with every person

Poetry doesn't always stick with you
but sometimes you can't get it out of your head.

Sometimes you want nothing more than for the poem to end
to have never read it

Others you read and re-read and wish you could read it once more
for the first time.

You were the hardest poem I ever read.
I didn't pretend to like all of you
like Whitman
But I loved you all the same
like Dickinson.

You were my favorite poem I ever read.

K.A.

Emily and I share a birthday
the odds of course which, are 1 in 365
I wonder if she would pay it any mind
if I were to relay that fact to her
in time traveling letters

We'd diss the Romantics
in our clinging to things old fashioned
But perhaps in some sort of
airy heaven mystic light
feather backed eunuchs deemed
our mutual yearly markers Holy

We share introversions too
So I know not to peak behind her cloudy veil
when it's my turn to hike the steps
of the colossal celestial mansion  
I'll just listen to see if you have a Boston accent
or send soaring aeroplanes, if you prefer
with fresh ink drops sliding off into sky

Before I go up there, I may ask my sister too
to burn all my poems, delete them also
Wondering when you request'd the same
did you not care 'bout words lost to air?

Was Annabelle just a woman in Poe’s dream?
Was there really an angel on Janet Frame’s wooden table?
Did Emily Dickinson really wear white for the rest of her life?
Was Dante just a bitter ***** to tell people about a red man with horn’s on his head
Didn’t think it was Halloween too soon on the corner of his calendar

I resembled all the traits these  writer’s made of their spoken lives just like Bukowski
If he did live in many rooms and lost his brain cells in bottles
Maybe in the afterlife Burroughs will give me pointers on drugs along with Thompson. Meeting Rimbaud ask him if he ever was in the closet. Took an eyeful of literature before high school,  made friends with boozers, losers and psychopaths. Don’t quote me because I cherish them so much I know I’ll try to make it like them soon, dead yet my heroes they remain alive
WRITE ME OFF WRITE ME OFFF Write me down there’s no pen and papers around scrawl on the wall have a purpose to write them all