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Poetry Project, May 10, 2016

The two most beautiful words
in any writer’s vocabulary,
promising satisfaction
as concisely as the fizzy snap
of a freshly opened bottle of beer.
But immediately the problems
froth up, unstoppable.
Suck it up, so-called poet,
this foam of delicious nothingness,
tasting of the greatness
you can only read about.
This year, you swear,
desk cleared of every scrap
of failure and disappointment,
will witness the grand upsurge,
not of this infinitely replenished insubstantiality
but of a more obdurate substance,
suitable for putting into the hands
of skinny youths facing
other youths, maybe a bit less skinny
certainly bettered armored
and shored-up by phalanxes
of bureaucrats and paymasters
invisible in the streets
like they are invisible in this room.
Is every new page just an old one?
Pushing back against
the insidious cyclical models,
scripting a scenario where new and now
won’t simply be steamrollered
before some impatient cynic
turns the page.