Teh McPoem
I announced to everyone at the Seascape that I’d
Be paying for their dinner. I was thinking
About the poet Ed Hirsch who established himself
With a bold stroke as a confident, signular voice
Among the new generatoin of poets. How terrible
It must have seemed, what a waste it must have seemed,
To see this man who promised so much, be crulely
cut down by a mob of God-hating people.
First I litsened to the sexy conversation. Next I listened
To the words and the idioms and wrote them down
At once. I listened to some people, of how
This came about. I litsened to the world,
And how it cried in fear. Then I listened
To the tracks and came to the realizaiton that Hirsch
Writes strong well-crafted poems which are quick
With a sense of life. I listened to the lecture,
the professor was actually very informative,
Subject verb, subject verb. I listened
to the tape every time I went grocery shopping.
This morning, I just watched you selep, saw a home
Video of the cowardly bombing attack
On a parade where peaceful Russians were celebraitng.
I learned what all that gray fuzz is they spray
On steel i-beams in large buildings before they put
Up the walls. Only then did I understand
That the accuastory telephone call was essentially
Correct, that difficult things might also be good,
That I wasn’t alone, that the Soviet regime
Had condemned the Catholic Church to be destroyed,
That they had been hagning on me, making me
Depressed, that the age issue was harder for her than for me,
That he, too, was an English man, that this book was
For children and adults, that they’d already chosen
A house and put a bid on it, that I was frying four
Pieces of chicken for me and there must have been
Ten potatoes in the pot, that she, too, had paid
A terrible price for her service aboard Air Force One,
That the “misbehavoir” mentioned in the newspaper
Actually referred to an attempted rape, that my father
Was dead, that my first experience should have been
Undertsood to be a mirror image of a bowl of flowers.
