(A poem I had published some 4 years ago. I like to remind myself that I used to be a poet. In hopes of being prodded back to that calling.)
WHISPERS OF SANDBURG FROM A POET NOW SILENCED
In ‘22 I was Sandburg,
Swirling words into Susquehanna beauty,
but only for a single day,
just long enough to hear the bells
of money
as castanet clicks,
to declare the poets as workaday bankers.
I wore his august skin
to conjure lies,
wore that blond Warholian ‘do just to do it,
anything to chase the ennui,
‘fight against the bla bla
and lah de dah’.
There is, though,
a time to leave behind
the beautiful skulls of poets now gone,
to sift back down to loam
and resurrect the one who breathes
somewhere still
beneath his brittle tomb,
scribbling virgin paper
to something dirtier
than the words
he strives so hard to bleed.
KEVIN CRAIG 