*****

Recorded Reading (2:53): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/phte0u8mhrpod5usma25n/A-Panel-of-Modern-Poetic-Judges.mp3?rlkey=370lqcjerowzsjcys6cj83wcr&dl=0

*****

A Panel of Modern Poetic Judges

However, in this modern day
Shall academic we
Presume to pass opinion on
Submitted poetry
In hopes this trophy might be won
When none of us agree
On what poetry’s meant to say
Or even what it be?

We’ll give each work the third degree
Experts putative
Heaven knows, we can’t be caught
The smallest credit give
(Knowing not what ’tis we ought
But sure what we ought not let live)
To that which academic’ly
Be called “derivative”

Anything which sounds like Keats,
Browning or Khalil Gibran
With a sense of sweet relief
We’ll have to pass upon
Our colleagues would bring us to grief
If we sent any of those on —
No intellectual elites
But deluded automatons

That leaves us only two or three
Which read like nothing of
Any of the classic verse
Which we’ve been taught how not to love
Hey, this one reads out in reverse
Ordinary printing of
We think that this selection may be
Champion hereof

Before final decision make
Remember we must careful scan
For any content therewithin
The which we ought to ban
For no one may our contest win
By any other than
Approved and legal norm their take
On woman versus man,

Indigenous inheritance
Or those with disability
It must in every point make match
With what the current mindset be
Best not let this panel catch
Poets practicing liberty
By taking any stance
Officially unsanctioned be

It, colleagues mine, apparent is
Our backs are up against the wall
Humiliating failure to
We just may be about to fall
For that eliminated, too, those few
Legitimate we call —
Luckily we do have this:
A poem means nothing at all!

Get out the streamers, trumpets and
Pummel the vic’try drum
The morass Mediocrity
We have return-ed from
With incoherent he or she
Of voice sufficient dumb
To warrant striking up the band
Hail our next laureate become!

*****

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

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