By Glen North
This poem is unwanted.
This poem is illegitimate.
This poem was an accident...
I didn't mean to write it!
Yes, I let my pen touch the pad
but I was just scribbling,
just doodling
just playing around with it
like so many other poets before me.
See, I thought the paper
was on the pill
so I didn't use any protection
no correction tape
no white out
no eraser...
I wanted to have it aborted
but by the time
I had saved up enough loot
it had already reached its 3rd stanza.
The paper won't consent
to an ink test
so I'm not claiming it...
However, I see it hanging out
in the hood sometimes...
This poem lets its words sag
so you can see its behind.
This poem wasn't raised right
so it can barely even rhyme.
This poem hangs out with weed papers
and it drinks too much wine.
This poem will be dead before it reaches its 21st line-
crumpled up in some waste basket
by a suicide letter
or tragically executed by
a heartless paper shredder.
At the very least,
it will end up locked behind the bars
of some legal pad
it will be too late then
to blame it on Dad (whoever that may be).
No, this poem won't end happily
it has already lost touch with reality
heavily influenced by MTV,
it's caught up in some hip hop fantasy
it denies the genre in which it belongs
this poem thinks that it's a rap song:
"P to the izz O
E to the izz M
that's the anthem
get all your hands up."
This poem will never be published
revised or anthologized.
This poem will never reside on a library shelf
because this poem is illiterate
it can't even read itself.
This poem could never be a love poem.
It's too busy trying to be a
let-me-lick-you-up-and-down
till-you-say-stop-mack-daddy poem
but countless careless encounters
have made it a
that's-just-my-baby's-daddy poem
and it has left fatherless verses
in journals and notebooks all over town
with each passing line,
it sinks further down.
Job, Psalm, Proverbs
and not just these
but Ecclesiastes
and Song of Solomon
yearned for this poem
to follow them.
These prophetic poems
that foretold of the coming Messiah
and the glory of the New Jerusalem
reached out to this poem,
prayed for this poem,
loved this poem,
but some poems
just don't want to be saved,
they just crash and burn
at the bottom of the page.
