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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