Most people don’t know (and you’re not going to tell them)

That, if you had enough coffee

And a few cool locales where you could sit and be your marvelous, wonderful, imaginative, expressive self–

You could fill the world with so many poems that

Snarky people would make comments about quality and quantity.

They’d say you’re that you’re poem-luting the planet!

Poeming at the mouth!

While you wrap yourself in your creator’s cloak

And pretend to be oblivious

Of the self-righteous swagger of those 20th century American culture heroes

Those hard-drinking guys who led the pack,

Who went on safaris, drove Cadillacs into Las Vegas swimming pools, won awards, married badly and died ironically.

They didn’t care what their art was doing to the world.

They didn’t ask for whom the bells tolled.

They ate it up, spit it out

And kept going until they couldn’t go anymore.

Which is what people want from cars, farm animals, apple trees, beaches, and every mousetrap that’s better than the last,

But not from poems.