Happy Poets, Sad Poems
sad poets do not write happy poems
they write sad desperate lonely hateful ones
and happy poets do not write happy poems
in fact happy poems do not exist outside
of children's literature and even Silverstein
when he was at his most ebullient was sardonic
with words next to which he set the weirdest drawings
and this is all because the frame from which one writes
is broken and about to fall off the wall with a glance
or the touch of the feet of a fly landing
upon the rotting wood from which it is made, yes,
it is never just a thousand smiles strung together
like popcorn on a string holding up the holidays
or bellies fully sated and wont for a regular meal, no,
it is empty like the stomachs of millions of Gazans
who are being deprived of aid due to some fat cat in a suit
lining the pockets of all his friends around the white
house with emerald green straws through which they drink
blood raining from a sky which is now being littered
with manufactured clouds that can sprinkle any color
you choose, with funds from the department
of defense, distractedly spun with marketing campaigns
to make it seem like we’re saving the dying
great barrier reef that is drying out so rapidly.