The Trouble with Poetry

The Trouble with Poetry:

A Poem of

Billy

The trouble with poetry,

I realizedas I walked along a beach one night --cold Florida sand under my bare feet,a show of stars in the sky --the trouble with poetry isthat it encourages the writing of more poetry,more guppies crowding the fish tank,more baby rabbitshopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?unless the day finally arriveswhen we have compared everything in the worldto everything else in the world,and there is nothing left to dobut quietly close our notebooksand sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joyand I rise like a feather in the wind.

Poetry fills me with sorrowand I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills mewith the urge to write poetry,to sit in the dark and wait for a little flameto appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,to break into the poems of otherswith a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,cut-purses, common shoplifters,

I thought to myselfas a cold wave swirled around my feetand the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,which is an image I stole directlyfrom Lawrence Ferlinghetti --to be perfectly honest for a moment --the bicycling poet of San Franciscowhose little amusement park of a bookI carried in a side pocket of my uniformup and down the treacherous halls of high school.

From The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, 2007