What Such a Poem Will Do

It will not last.
Not made of
immortal blocks. Will cave
under the weight of snide remarks,
will be run over by
scholarship.
Its rhymes
churning like a babble,
no litany of a chant.
He who wrote it stealing
hours
from a long April night,
wrote it furiously
before dinner,
trembling now in
its futility
in
the next afternoon.

It doesn’t ooze- anything.
Doesn’t wear ornaments
that tinkle sweetly.
Mindless, resting;
its critics took its wallets.
Its grand ambition is floating
in the Arabian Sea, with fishing nets, a
submission page.

I will not ask you
to befriend such
a poem. To indulge it or to listen to its grumble
will be a waste of time.
If it does not die of shame,
some strange disease will take it.
Enlist its name
on a charity roster.
Buy it a puff but,
leave it without hearing its woes.
Strange nightmares will obliterate it,
today or tomorrow.
Its heart is thick now,
so thin is its skin.

What such a poem will
do
that can not laugh,

can not love itself?