"poemslaughter" poems
how do you bump off a poem
you suffocate it
with superfluous words
and stuffy grammar
for it cannot
inhale the pretentious fumes
of a smouldering thesaurus
in indelicate hands
or chop off stanzas
with a fountain machete
watch the words dissolve
into immutable discord
a jigsaw puzzle
that’s no longer a picture
you stab it
with the drab discipline
of a force-fit
two-bit
rhyming scheme
and leave it gasping
for a breath of free verse
or strangle it
with a taut wire
of ineffable material
imbue it
with playful profundity
and everything else poets do
except the crucial dash
of yourself
yes these are
the standard
operating procedures
in the do-it-yourself manual
on poemslaughter
but the sure-fire way
to **** a promising poem
is to never write it
because once born
a poem never truly dies
even upon mutilation
it is only relegated
to literary life-support
until
a chance rearrangement
of potent words
in the fevered imagination
of a sentient being
infuses it with
a lust for life
i’m alive
it’ll proclaim
jump out of
its feather bed
and quietly
mutter to itself
i’m still alive
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC