OPEN-ENDED POEMS

I never write open-ended poems meant

to be all-encompassing, or accessible to all, 

replete with striped wheelchair on-ramps, 

and neon-vested service dogs sniffing the luggage.

You’d think a poet would make it easy 

for the reader, but that’s never the point, is it? 

However, I suspect those little poems harbor dreams 

of grandeur to titillate the psyche, perhaps stretch 

the intellect, or maybe even surprise the emotions. 

But my poems are naked weather balloons of truth 

stretched taut over the throats of escaped lines. 

So, picture these words, vapid little mouth-breathers, 

up late at night, and drooling, gathering like zombies, 

shuffling from grave to yard, in search of spare brains, 

an easy fix, limping clichés circling a Hallmark card, 

not a divine spark of meteoric brilliance among them. 

No two tinder stones rubbed over the cold campfire.

They are no Rhodes Scholars seeking status.

Call them cowards, cheap floozies, and shapeshifters—

they’re not ambitious seekers of fame,

nor do they want to take a stab at redefining 

the great I am that haunts us all. 

5/31/23 Write On! with Susie Terence , forthcoming in Spectrum. well, I guess the poem is not forthcoming. After all it is the editor, Dan Campbell took down the blog, so now it is once again unpublished.