Trying to write a poem without using
that word, that concept around which
most of them are built, is harder than it looks.
It can be done, some say,
because all you really want
to know about is YOU, but it still
feels awfully distant and sterile.
Have you ever tried painting
a landscape without using green?
What does a symphony composed
to be played on Jello mounds sound like?
It’s possible to enter a confessional box
and recite everyone else’s transgressions,
but then where’s the sweat-beaded contrition?
It would be a sauceless, unseasoned,
unsweetened bit of verse concocted
and best consumed alone in a cave,
that, thankfully, is almost done. One in which
that whiney 1st Person thingy wasn’t used.
Not even once. Wasn’t so hard after all.
So how do YOU think I did?
Damn….