Archive 01/29/09 - (2)

   

Belgian Hotcakes

                                                                         

One glorious morning,

During America's demoralizing economic recession

(The closest, of any, to the Great Depression of 1929),

I hung out my shingle, opened wide my windows and door,

With more than a modest expectation

Of making a success, purveying my poems —

Sonnets, odes, elegies, villanelles, limericks, haikus —

For a penny each, assuming they'd sell like Belgian hotcakes,

Have people begging in the streets,

When I couldn't keep up with their insatiable demand

And would find myself praying for instantaneous inspiration.

 

But as truth would have it,

Not a starving soul who passed my shingle gave a damn,

Had the slightest interest in, or practical need for, poetry.

And who was I, but a lowly, starry-eyed bard

Filled with illusions of helping to turn things around?

And how could I blame those tattered masses,

For passing me by, to wait in line for a bowl of soup?

Who could fault those skeletal millions, for ignoring me?

Sadly, those disenfranchised, half-dead urchins

Never would learn that my poems were Belgian hotcakes

That could feed them for eternities.

 

 

 

 

 

01/29/09 - (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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