The love lyric has been exhausted. It took a shit
in the yard and lies panting on the porch, tongue
dangling in a heaving pant. The troubadours’
fingers are in bloody shreds from strumming;
they’ve developed throat conditions.
Dante gave up on Beatrice with the birth of
punk rock, and Petrarch couldn’t care less
if he ever fucks Laura: “I mean, have you seen
Deadwood? Soooo good,” he posts instead.
But it’s not just that. Poetry is sick of me.
It’s sick of I. It’s sick of you.
It’s sick of form, sure, but it’s also sick of function.
We’re not entertaining courtiers up in this bitch
no more. We’re no longer wooing maids.
Time’s winged chariot is drawing near
for the whole human race now. Mark but this flea
and how it will be extinct soon, as will the
anthologies housing poems in language too distant
for kids to learn to love poetry with the
educations they’ve been given. Get a job, man.
Survival’s where it’s at these days. Who needs love?
