Improving

Why this need to feel like we are going somewhere, getting somewhere, improving?

I’ve been reading deeply these days while I mend. Especially, returning to Eliot, to Steiner. But I’ll keep my writing on these topics, poetics, philosophy, society - close to my breasts. I think I’d lose a lot of writers and probably for good reason - flights of fancy, literary puffery aren’t everyone’s cups of teas. So today, just a poem, simple poem about how I’m feeling, where I am. Thanks for reading.

I have been waiting
all day
for a poem to come.

I promised myself
I’d write one a day.

It’s the only way to improve
as a “professional” writer
say the YouTube stars and
MFA crowd.

So, I sat and waited for
a thought,
this poem to come.

One never did.
Like a woman forlorned
nothing did come,
so I wrote this poem just
to have one in the bag,
meet my daily quota.

Sorry.
Not one of my best
but hey,
I’m now, getting there
part of the poetry crew,
the ever churning
crap generating machine
saying they are “improving”.

Damn.
You can’t fight progress.
Just join ‘em and help fill
the universe
with approved crap that
everyone will read while
dipping their biscottis
and feeling like
they belong and are
improving.

Maybe one day,
I’ll find that one reader
who’ll ask nothing of
the poem …
that reader who’ll
enjoy the sweetness
for what it is
asking not what it does.

Maybe one day.
For now,
I’m still improving.