Bad Poetry

or La Vie En Rose

I want to write bad poetry

about you: recycled tropes,

archaic language—let me

count the ways, desperate,

predictable, exhaustive eye similes—

like grains of sand or stars…

I want to write poetry so bad

you become unrecognizable,

not trace of a person: imagined

ideals, undigested inheritance

of solipsist romantic, rose colored

glasses already beginning to crack.

I want to write heartbreak:

shattered and splintered,

preemptive and total, tempting

nihilist conversion, life vacant

and meaningless, alternating

use of lonesome and lonely.           

I want to write fiction: every twist

planned, crafted story-arches,

familiar epilogue, formula

followed like liturgy; rather

than write one transparent and

simple line: humdrum

menu debates, half-smiles,

forced laugh generosity, sipping

coffee in an empty shop

scrawling thoughts, blank stare,

the vacant chair across the table,

wishing you were coming.