Tongue Twisting Limbs

16 | why some people shouldn't read poetry

People who make love to walls should not read poetry;

people who would rather wax
on the sympathetic principles of syllables
and syntax have no place rating the merits
of my rhythm.

The stanza is simple, but for the
complexities you rearrange for it.

Sheath your revenge against my poem,
take the lines between your teeth
and chew until chucks of lettering
become lost amongst the thorny stretches
of your teeth, the syphilitic subterfuge of your
larynx dodging the upper crest of your
own deliberate simplicity.

People who can define ironic should not read poetry;

they should have to comb their hair with the
stretches of my imagery; fondle their
masturbatory tendencies with the trench
of my verse,

though

your hand should
awkwardly scratch your forehead in
bitterous gall.

You want a piece of my poem?

My pitiful poem riddled with
error and declension

my raging routine, a
ragtime debutant on the foam-licked
seashore of your unapologetic display
of ineptitude,

my poem is catching, you
sputter and whine from its
contagions.

My poem will beg your pardon
when it dwarfs you in substance
and manifesto,

an aria is just a
errant knave, or so you will
declare to anyone who will listen,

my poem will merely yawn,
strut its oblong octaves southward

verse-legs will walk
their way down to the end.