NO, YOU CANNOT WRITE POETRY by Giulio Magrini

If you carry initials after your name
You cannot write poetry

You must first figure out everyone’s woke-ness 
Achieving perfect symmetry 
In an environment of smug confusion

If you are wealthy
Don’t you dare write poetry
If you are poor
You can write it 
Because you are powerless 
And no one listens

If you rhyme 
You can write poetry
You will aggravate everyone
Your words a self-fulfilling prophesy 
In harmonious contempt

Write poetry that is amorphous
Incomprehensible and perplexing
The vapid will be transfixed by you
And the scholarly will ignore you

Your attempt to occupy 
A gloomy or cheerful preoccupation
In poetry  
Are hopeless pathetic

The harmful effects 
Of your human derivative waste
On our environment

Don’t waste your time
Poetry is not your thing
It is not meant 
For your type of person

And what are you doing
Listening to what you think is poetry? 
You live in dissonance with poetry

Plans should be made 
Subscriptions cancelled
For anthologies and meds
For you cannot write poetry

You do not belong
With those others who do not belong
For they are the poets
And live in the ether

They breathe the air of the misbegotten angels
Needing to fly in the polluted air
Speaking the language of the dead and dying

But someone must do it
And the person who is crucified this time 
Cannot be you
Because you cannot write poetry
We have poets for that

 

Giulio Magrini has performed and published his work for over fifty years, and is from Pittsburgh PA. His anthology The Color of Dirt is available on the internet or preferably from him personally at giulio27@verizon.net. He has been nominated for both the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net twice. Giulio tells us “We have put our hands in the dirt and sanctified each other”.  

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