Response to Wicked, Excellently

In the aviary tonight the birds
loom over the salt estuaries of your manuscript.
The birds forgive your head lodged in Dean Young’s crotch,
your swallowing that bereft projectile
for who does not pretend, at least once in awhile,
they drink the nectar of angels?
Remember what Lorca said,
“When the angel sees death, he flies in
slow circles and weaves tears of narcissus and ice
into the elegy. . . how it horrifies him to feel even the
tiniest spider on his tender rosy foot!”
So wipe your lips, you’ve had your fill,
taken in all the nutrients available,
tit or dick, you’ve sucked enough,
Red rover, Red rover
this love fest is over.

The miles have sculpted your muse,
licked her lean, consumed the fat of her lamp,
I’m not interested in the muse, but I am interested in the poet
possessing one, “Poets who have muses hear voices and
do not know where they are coming from . . .
The muse awakens the intelligence . . . but
intelligence is the enemy of poetry . . . he
forgets that ants could eat him or a great arsenic
lobster could fall suddenly on his head.”
Lovers are lousy at racquet sports and lovers
are horrible and always make us goofy.
“In poetry this struggle for expression and
communication is sometimes fatal.”

So let’s give up, no let’s not, let’s
fight to the death and suffer and die in every poem
we write from here on and on.
Let’s dash any lines of hope that sneak into our stanzas
stamp them to dust.
Oooooh, pretty, pretty sky,
full of birds and angels
we no longer choke,
die die die
our struggle, our salvation.