METAPOETICS II/VI
by Will de Kypia


For E.A.P.

I Am Still Waiting For
That Special PoemTo Arrive

No one knows where a poem comes from.
—Philip Levine, PBS News Hour
August 10, 2011

Do you know where a poem
comes from? Me neither.

I know where babies come from.
The way they're made is notorious,
a poem's origin is more mysterious.

I am a poet, a working poet.
Most of my poems simply
drop in unannounced.

Usually they'll do this only
once though there have been
occasional irksome exceptions..

One morning I might wake up, roll outta
bed, and head towards the kitchen
to brew me a fresh pot of java.

Bumbling downstairs, I reach my man
cave, the private retreat and personal
scriptorium nobody is allowed to enter.

Nobody except me.

The cave door is open wide,
scraps of paper litter my lair.

Poems cover the desk and the chair, the
bookcase, the mini-fridge and the wine rack.

Words, lines, stanzas, whole pages glare at me,
muttering and giving me hostile looks before
I have slurped one single slug of coffee.

Glaring back at a horde of strangers I snarl—

"Who are you? Why are you here?
And how the hell did you get in?"

I am an incorrigible drug fiend,
befuddled and not fit for company
till I've had my daily dose of caffeine.

One especially unprepossessing member
of this unimpressive assemblage of uninvited
guests gives me an unexpected response—

"Apparently Daddy has forgotten his kids.
We are poems you yourself created, and then
calmly, no, and then callously rejected.

Well, a forgetful father and his pissed off
progeny are now officially reconnected.

We got in here Old Saint Nick style by
sliding down your fireplace chimney,

However, we bear no gifts for you.

We came to obtain a fairly substantial
indemnification from you for ourselves.

On a magical day not too long ago you
planted us and we flourished in your
fertile garden of verses for a season.

On a tragical day not much later you
became disenchanted with us and plucked
each blossom but would not give us a reason.

We are seething with anger because we
were unceremoniously tossed away
and could not understand why.

We are angrier still because we
do not merit the merest mention in
your smug self-aggrandizing résumé.

You are going to add us.

We'll tell you what else we want
after we've inspected your abode
to inventory its contents.

In the meantime you ought to
offer us a taste of coffee at least,
you offspring abusing beast!

We all suffer from an addiction,
from a common congenital affliction
we sadly inherited from our daddy.

You!

They begin to roam through the cave,
examining the dusty bottles and books,
the bohemian artwork, and my seldom
used secondhand home workout set.

I have no recollection of these
hapless dregs of the art of poesy
and hate to think they are mine.

Replying not absolutely
forthrightly but reasonably
politely I make three points:

"First, there is no coffee.
Second, I am not your daddy.
Third, you slid the wrong chimney.
🏠
If you provide a street number
I will direct you to the correct one."

Rather than answering they leer like
they're considering filing a paternity suit
to force me to take a damn DNA test.

We working poets are generally
scrabblers and scroungers. There
is no way I can hire an attorney.

So I must somehow distract a
bundle of deplorable discards until
I am able to dump them again.

"Whoever you are, I am happy
you are here for we play the same
game, i.e., the poetry game.

I'd like you youngsters to
help me finish a poem I've been
working on for aeons of ages.

I'm trying to compose an ending
that is both witty and wise and also
appealing to cute poetical chicks.
🐥
The poem I'm requesting advice
on is the very one we are currently
in so do please try to be quick."

They completely ignore me as they
continue to poke around my sanctum.

I find their examinations as intrusive
as if they were probing my rectum.

They're appraising my possessions,
deciding how much they will demand
to settle the trumped up lawsuit they
plan to lodge against their father.

Me!

They'll learn you can't extract
blood from a stone, a turnip, or a
perennially impecunious poet.

The actual name of the game we
rhymesters play is the poverty game
and don't us knuckleheads know it!

I could use a double espresso right now
to collect my wits and with luck avoid being
caught up in an awkward authorship row.

Ordinary people will perhaps forgive me for
siring a pack of caterwauling cacaphoneys.

The lords and ladies of the artsy world won't.

They'll pillory me as the perpetrator
of multitudinous nasty poetasteries.

Thereby rendering me anathema
to those cute poetical chicks.

💊💊💊💊

Suddenly I remember the pep pills
stashed in the pocket of my robe.

I pop one, I pop two, I pop quite a few.
Espresso in a pill is a revitalizing thrill.

My sluggish sleep-addled brain soon unaddles,
assesses this invasion-of-the-outcasts situation,
devises a strategy for a permanent relocation.
🧠
With well-concealed scorn I address
the jerks who assert they are my works
and thus can claim a right to my name:

"My children, it's a shame but it's true
there are oodles of things I've forgot.

For a moment I kinda spaced out.
Your poor old papa's fading memory
is nothing for him to brag about."

The poems are typical examples
of the worst sort of pretentiously
cryptic pseudo-intellectual posturing.

So without even a smidgeon of shame
I loudly and faux-proudly proclaim

"But I can (and I do) brag about
you, the totally incompre- I mean
incomparable children I've begotten.

You are absolutely amazing:
Lyrical, topical, full of verbose
speculations philosophical.

Do you ever hanker
to be megastars blazing
across the cybersky?"
✵✵✵
My skeptical scions warily reply
"Indeed, to blaze we do hanker."

"May I bring you to a lit biz
honcho I happen to know who will
agree you are splendiferous?"

My egotistical scions merrily cry
"Yes, to him you may bring us!"

"He's a mighty media mogul who can
catapult you into the cultural pantheon
by posting you on his trendy website."

Seduced by my spiel they together exclaim
"We all ache to attain great acclaim!"

"The gentleman is forever in search
of treasures and becoming acquainted
with you would surely be a delight."

I am positive the Verba Volant site will
publish them. The owner is a greed head
who measures his treasures in moolah.
💸
He utilizes the selection process
the music biz used to term payola.

Guess I'm going to spend the
weekend at my regular side hustle
as a part-time ride share driver.

I load the children into a junker
too beat-up for Uber and therefore
suitable for its archrival Unter.

I tell the Verba Volant guy I have
few favorites who wish a prominent
placement in his re$pected publication.

And since I am still enrolled in the U.S.
witness protection program he can't use my
name, not the fake, of course not the true.

He will attribute the poems
to a famously prolific author.

Either the fellow from Avon
or else my personal favorite, Anon.

I negotiate a spot in an upcoming online
issue, wish poems and publisher good luck.

On the way home I savor a grande
at Starbucks and return refueled to
my again tranquil writer's haven.

I ponder the likelihood of a
recrudescence of word weeds
in my pristine garden of verses.

Did the poems spill their seed
on the shag rug in the foyer to
produce a new crop of drivel?

Lay a clutch of their odious eggs
in some closet’s gloomiest corner?

Or leave a monstrous mass of spores
to sprout from the humongous heap of
dirty laundry down in the basement?

No, I need not worry for my
poems have never been clever.
🍷
I go to the man cave, pour me a
glass, and start to write. I scribble
through the day, deep into the night.
🕒
It is nearly the witching hour
when I crawl back to bed.

There I remind myself once more
that I should be brewing the morning
joe on the night before to be ready to
greet my lovely and long-awaited visitor.


Someday I hope to find a
perfect poem I am proud to call
mine dropping in on me unannounced.

Of course we'll recognize each other,
and with a winsome smile she will say

"Hello, Daddy dearest!
Is there still a wee bit of
the bean juice left for me?"

Wherever she comes from
the child is certainly mine.

I will give my darling a hug
and offer her a mug of coffee,
maybe cold or maybe hot.

Tomorrow could be that
marvelous day. For her I will
gladly brew a fresh pot.