METAPOETICS
by Will de Kypia

Unfinished

A poem has no final form,
it is always a work in progress.

The poet's goal is not
completion but perfection.

~ ~ ~
I was working on the proof of one
of my poems all the morning
and took out a comma.

In the afternoon
I put it back again.
Attributed to Oscar Wilde
~ ~ ~

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

Me neither, I just find them.
Wake up, roll outta bed, groan
toward the kitchen for coffee
and they’re there.

Littering the desk, the chair, the floor.
Words, lines, stanzas, whole pages glare
at me before I've even had my coffee.

I glare back, ask “Who are you? What do you want?”
but they don't answer, just leer like they might be
considering a paternity suit, demanding a DNA test.

So I say “Hey guys, you're lookin' good,
let's show you off to a few people, OK?” 

Bring 'em to a couple hangouts,
pretend they're old friends new
in town, need a place to crash.

When someone agrees
to put them up,
I skedaddle.

But back home I worry.

What if they deposited an egg
in a closet’s darkest corner?

Or left a few spores to sprout from
the mound of my dirty underwear?

Maybe spilled their seed on the carpet?

Eventually I crawl back to bed,
fall asleep.Then all those voices
in my head wake up and start
arguing with each other again.

THIS IS NOT MY POEM
My poem was totally awesome.
I crafted it with both art and artifice.
A copious cornucopia of components shone,
each one a scrupulously selected precious stone
precisely placed to harmonize with all its neighbors.
The massive assemblage formed a labyrinthine mosaic,
simultaneously subtly variegated and monolithically unified.
~
That poem was a grand euphoniously tessellated symphony._
This poem is a mere bagatelle combining discordant
imagery with a surfeit of awkwardly pretentious
verbiage while a risibly feckless pique tinges
the whole clumsy opus. Give me back the
poem I wrote and give it back now.
Or else I'll write another one.
THIS IS A WARNING

The Poet Smitherick___..__.__
Meets The Muse______.___

Dear loyal readers,_____________________

I wish to share with you this recollection of a significant
episode in my literary apprenticeship which might be
of interest to those who have enjoyed the poems.

I saw her late on a Friday night
sitting in a dim corner of a 25/7 café.
Alone, playing with her lovely pentameters.

“I want—”

“Everyone wants” she replied.

“I can’t—”

“Your desire lacks talent.”

“You and I—”

“In your wet dreams.”

“Compensation is not an issue because I—”

“Dinner and drinks will buy you the right
to unzip my toga and ogle my pentameters.
For lobster and champagne, you can fondle.”

“Plus a Polaroid to prove that you and I—”

“OK, throw in dessert, but the picture will
not be of archival quality. Chemical changes
cause colors to shift and fade. The emulsion
dries out, cracks, then flakes off. Nothing
of our encounter will remain except your
own puerile self-serving fabrications.”

“I believe the patina of age enhances—”

“Dabbler.”

Sincerely,___________
Francis K. Smitherick_____
PS: She had the lobster, I had brisket,
we both drank a lot of champagne,
and she got some crème fraiche.

What A Good Poem Does

A good poem creates a space.

This space is not a void but a vessel
that transports you to another world.

A distant and timeless world,
so vivid you have always lived there,
so marvelous you will never leave.

Until the real world, as indifferent to poems
as it is to those who read them, pulls
you back into time's fretful flow.

If the poem is very good
the space comes too.

🚀

One That Survived
A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned.
W.H. Auden, paraphrasing Paul Valéry

Most of my children die of neglect.

Of neglect rather than abuse
for I am not a cruel father,
I am an artist.

The act of creation is rapture
but stewardship shadows the act.

Though I love my progeny, children require
a village of care to flourish. And I live alone.

They are in my heart as they are in my steno notebooks.
I close the drawer intending to return soon, very soon.

Later, much later, I will find the little darlings stacked in
spiral alternation, past resurrection before the ink dried.

I am an artist.
All artists create
but not all of us nurture.

I immolate the corpses without mourning.

The Alchemist

I do not carve words in stone
or inscribe them with ink on paper.

I gather thoughts and emotions,
collect feelings, fantasies, and fears.

Then I transmute these into a golden flux.

⚗️