Even though this isn't my poem, it's still my secret. I was happy when I came across it. This is an excerpt from Blue Spruce by Mark Halliday:

Secondly,--and here's the real charmer
among the attractions of verse:
it's so much easier to write than prose!
Poets don't admit this, of course,
and why should they?
If they're not going to get paid
they should at least be allowed to
milk the public for a little respect;
and in this country people respect work
That's right, I said work,
and no funny business. So a versifier,
in order to win any lasting respect
(beyond the glow of a few chuckles)
has goot to seem to labor.
Yet the secret fact of the matter is,
as indicated above, that verse is no sweat
relatively speaking; because

you don't have to plug all the holes;
in fact you're supposed to
punch out
new ones;
you can leave loose ends dangling
all
over the
bed
the
kitchen table,
your lover's
body
your
parent's lives,
and people accept them as part of your game.
In verse there is no final judge,
and they know it, and you know they know it, and as long as you tie up every fith string,
rougly, your readers and your listeners will imagine
that some of the four strings
are probably tied up, and who knows which?
Oh, it's a fine life, this making verses;
PROSE IS SERFDOM
in poetry the freedom is a blast.
("Blast"... do I mean that metaphgorically?
do I intend some ironic overtone of explosion?
Or is blast here simply a colloquial term
which I resort to for a touch of comic relief?)
Just leave them baffled
and they'll treat you right!
It's so easy when you get the knack,
I could die laughing about it sometimes--


(And there's more, but I'm probably too long already. Anyway, I feel like this a lot.)

Anonymous
11:39:01 PM