poems by tom miller

i hate poetry

i hate most poetry

no-- strike that--

i hate it all!

 

now, don’t get me wrong,

i hate my stuff too, but

it’s the masters that really

stink.

 

you know, yeats, kipling,

poe, frost, carver, hughes, i’d

mention the girls, but

i’d have to hold my nose,

and cross my legs tightly,

 

then there’s bukowski.

he’s got some readable junk,

but poems? would i call them

that? no, i don’t think so. they

 

don’t rhyme, and they stink.

 

yada yada DRINK yada yada

WHORE yada yada HORSES

yada yada KILL MYSELF,

 

well, you got your death. now,

shut up already. jesus.

 

and i hate the small press, and

those pompous editors-- they’re

 

so fucking jaded, the lot of them.

 

last shit i sent out, i got a note

back with a lecture about my

cover letter being a xerox form,

 

kind of like the rejections i

receive over and over again in love,

and i wanna just shout, "shit, man,

 

are you publishing poetry or

cover letters?" it’s all a big

circle jerk anyway. i don’t think

poetry as an art is valid. seems to

me that any simpleton can

fashion a few words

into stanzas and bitch,

complain, or just rant.

 

Most poetry books are

a waste of paper. i’ve seen

poems that use ten words

on a whole page with some

profound idea like how real

the taste of an apple is, or

how river-like her eyes were,

 

and i just want to eat shit

when i read it. and what’s worse,

nobody reads poetry. in fact,

a knitting seminar would probably

draw a better crowd than any

poetry reading i can think of.

 

we poets are just lying to

ourselves. the joke is over. folks

are figuring it all out-- poetry in

the renaissance was held in high

regard, until people began to discover

it was all bad, and silly, and a waste

of time, and over the course of time,

 

the poetry audience

dropped, like lemmings, off a cliff

they didn’t want to spend time

pouring over complicated metaphor

and simile and linguistic tinker--

 

it just didn’t make any sense-- but

now there’s plain spoken clear poetry

coming off the beat era, poetry that doesn’t

rhyme, it just sounds like talk. there’s

nothing poetic to it. there’s no way to win.

 

the great poets were freaky people and

shitty writers. their work is endearing because

their persona is peculiar, but that’s all.

 

okay,

so you think i’m a misogynist.

 

fine. i’ll talk about the women. oats

sucks. plath sucks. dickinson,

moore, stein, lyfshin, and ginsberg,

sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks.

 

yes, i consider ginsberg to be

a lady poet. don’t you? and his

scribblings are too bogged down

in political blah blah, and have about

as much passion as a cow farting

into the ozone layer. plus, he had big

ugly frog lips. from the romantics,

to the symbolists, to the twentieth

century, there has been nothing

but aimless musings about trees,

people, oceans, emotions, and

shit like that. i’d rather go to

disney world and ride

dumbo thirty times in a row.

 

well, there.

 

i’ve said it.

 

poetry is bad.

 

all of it.

 

mine included.

 

well, no.

not really.

actually, some of it is very good.

 

no, i’m kidding.

it’s all bad