a brief history of poetry | poem

poetry

Corso wrote it onto jailhouse brick as a boy.

Hank took a beer shit over it and lost his ass at the races

If Eliot really wanted it, he’d have written more poems.

Ted Hughes smoked a couple of wives, burnt diaries because of it

Neruda and Lorca took it to the grave, political retribution.

Baudelaire needed penicillin to survive it

Rimbaud was trafficked too young to even know how he did it.

Dickenson saw it all through a peephole—

Ginsberg knew it was fame, milked it until the end.

Betjemen got fat off it at aristocracy tea parties

Dylan Thomas pissed it all away at the bar.

Armitage studied madness until it came out poetry.

Carol Ann took it so much, it stained the bedsheets.

There are many poets out there, some ongoing—

Others going on in snotty academic settings.

Many are living in dire circumstances, amenia, mould.

Others are unknown but comforted by a knowing brilliance.

But only the abandoned can penetrate.