Alas

can you imagine

if the poetry you write. could make
people

the world, I mean

people in general, not just
clandestine cliques of incestuous appreciators

sit up and say

wow,

in a world
where poetry sets stone on fire, breaks
stained-glass hearts, where light -
the light of language used keen and fine!
, like lances - crashes through clouds
and breaks upon crowds in thunder, where a poet's
precious bull shit imagery and stubbed
-toe blood sting sunburned heart-swell pang
can put poetry
and poets

up where they used to belong. Can take poetry
and poets
places.

Poets all over the world are poised to be placed

on couches
of talk show hosts, on the front
page of the "A" section
not "D10" in Lifestyle, a poet
on the cover of the Rolling Stone,
as was done in the days of Ovid,
Percy Bysshe Shelley and
Yeats, or was it Keats,
back before newspapers, talk
show hosts and magazines. Poets
were setting the world on fire,
thrusting their Byronic capes
over and across broad shoulders in a howling gale,
shaking fists at eternity and making the abyss
blink - and the public fucking loved them
for it. Loved it! Ate it up. Ate them
up,

Throngs of them.

Poets were poets, then. Poets
were rolling in mad bitches and tons of cash,

imagine
if today

could be a world like that. Imagine if your poetry!

could get the world at large

to notice.

Alas