True, the adage that fish rot from the head down,
true, too, that poetry heads the procession of human
learning out of the caves and bookless nooks of time,
our blind and heartless master.
And here’s another fact to layer on: before poetry was
lured into the professional career machine of Higher Ed,
no American had become president already guilty of felony
34 times, with more and even graver crimes left to try.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc not withstanding, these facts
sing the conclusion that the tuition-fed sector is in bed
with fodder-fed brass hats, to make a felon trumpet sound:
theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die*.
To stop the rotting, we must quit the pretense that to bust
sentence structure, to let words find/lose imaginary order on/
off the page, to tell a truth you baked yourself, or found on
the shelf, is poetry, which is muse-fed yapping with Yahweh.
Dave Read
* theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die is from “Charge of the Light Brigade,” by English Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Non-republican governments make room in the royal household for the chief poet in the land, whose crown of laurels makes him sing for his succor, even when a dumb aristocrat’s command transforms 600 poor brave souls into cannon fodder in Crimea.