*****

Recorded Reading (2:29): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/moec0m32vehvuteg7czed/The-Better-Poet.mp3?rlkey=9edm3vhybad8x4pcle5b3wji7&dl=0

*****

The Better Poet

Gaze at me with disapproval
Go ahead and do it
If it makes you better feel
When you put me through it

I don’t care whether you are
Sensible enough to know it
And I don’t care what you write:
I am the better poet

Perhaps you have collected
From years and decades past
A book or two of poesy
You think deserves to last

In this form or in that form
Or in some choice of other ~
I write in that form also
And all of these as well, my brother

And do it at the rate
Of two or three or four a day ~
Books like your collection
I have one hundred with to play

Perhaps some younger minds you’ve had
The honor well to steer
As have I, both afar online
And in residency near

And for every hour you’ve given
To your world for free
You may credit twenty four
Giv’n our world by me

I’m sorry by this truth you
May be some unsettled made
But for each penny’s price you have
For poetic insight paid

I given a dollar have
And then a dollar more ~
If there can be but one
Judged any right standard for

By metric accuracy or
By quality or quantity,
By breadth and depth of wisdom,
By ultimate variety

Testified passionately
My readers in the thousands by
Whom by my works inspired have been
Both to laugh and cry

Since there cannot be but one
Understood to be
First among all equals
That poet should be me

Nor have I in the past succeeded,
Even when I were less loud
About my proper station,
In being just one of a crowd

So bring your little versifiers
To each other read
My friends, I have a world
Outside that room my verses heed

My absence be my presence
Until such time invited as
Such a one none other than
Such a poet was

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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