Let's Call Everything Poetry Because We Can't Write The Real Stuff Worth A Tinker's Dam, Sam

this is meat and potatoes.

this is a full meal

with buttered biscuits on the side.

yep. this is the real deal 

they will tell you this is poetry.

but I knew better when I was five.

this is not cherry alive.

this is meat and potatoes.

you cut it with a knife and fork.

this is not Shakespeare on the Duke of York

this is a bunch of people who got together one day

and couldn't decide what to say to make it be poetry

so they all voted on it and just decided

that anything they said no matter what is was

was going to be called poetry anyway from now on.

like little kids when they're losing the board games

all summer long and tump over all the pieces and say:

new rules now. let's start over. and be in clover.

that's what they did. out of their Id 

they made that Cinderella slipper fit

by cutting off their toes.

but everybody still knows

who the true bride is orwho was.

mary angela douglas 2 may 2021

Goodbye To Poetry;The Spoken Word Is a Bare Cupboard

everyone is smiling here

the room is thick with the word "poetry"

I cannot smile;despite the refreshments

the congenial crowd  honey sweet with masked enthusiasm

the golden linnet has flown away

I know that it won't return

but everyone will go on speaking anyway

saying something

smiling tenderly at the end with a question mark

as their voice recedes I take to mean

you will accept this as a poem won't you

I know that I would like to

if only I had not seen the snares laid

for my linnet

if only it had not flown away into the clouds of violet

never to return at least not here

in the green shade unmade.

mary angela douglas 29 april 2021