mercy in excellence

If my poems were so much better,
way better - if they were great
People would have to read them.
They'd be dragged back. FUCK

There was one and I missed one!
This clown
posts six on a Tuesday, nothing
for two weeks and then fourteen
and calls that "one-a-day"!
(on average). I'm suffocated
by a surging surfeit of excellence
barraged by rare feeling
at a strange and killing angle
delivered and pummeled
by coup de grace after
coup de grace, just

over the course of one poem.
Let alone when ten crop up at once,
menace you in gangs and you try
to thread your way through
delicately, diligently,
apologetically for tardiness
and they pounce! Circle 'round
kicking and knocking down, grappling
and gasping, scratching, biting until
you're beaten and exhausted,
stunned, bleeding and injured

- as only the very best poems
can do. A tad excessive

but it's what keeps you coming back,
wincing and grimacing in disappointment - nothing!
Nothing again today. No onslaught, no charging
massacre of the poem brigade, not even the odd

perfect gem. Spat out by itself. Meanwhile

waiting. Hung in suspense, wishing
for one - needing a poem! Because
they're all so much better, way
better - great. Just great

THAT

is of course why I don't do that
to them. Even if I couldn't,
I wouldn't, and we'll never know

you know.