Don't Presume

this poem will advance pleasure or wisdom, glide
from surprise to surprise through a bevy of brilliant
ideas, succulent images that flow into some riveting
epiphany. This poem doesn't possess any of those
elements or moves. Even if it did, even if it suddenly
copulated with a lascivious lyric, caught some kind of
sexually-transmitted-metaphor, it would still be un-
memorable, something akin to those Russian dolls, each
one hiding another just like it, same wood, same paint,
same blank facial expression, smaller and smaller, until
the last one, like the others, is opened. And the tiny
blue egg you thought would be revealed – has vanished.
Vamoose. Sayonara. Adios. Poems are like that.
Lives are like that. Even gods.