Ding-Dong, The Ads Are Gone: We Poems Are Thankful! Poem by Max Reif

I speak for all the poems here
in thanking the management
for removing the ads
that were draining off our blood.

For example, when a poet
used the phrase 'grapes of wrath',
the words appeared in blue
and a click took the reader
off, off, to an ad for a video,
an anger management program —
who knows what?

I'm a poem, I don't go off reading ads,
I'm complete in myself

but suddenly, well how would it feel
if your veins, the blue blood vessels
inside you, were siphoned off somewhere?
Would you like that?

We poems didn't like it either.
We like to think
we have integrity.

I thought I was going crazy,
couldn't hold a thought.

Now it's back to how it was:
I can stand quietly,
like a tree in an ancient grove,

until someone comes to contemplate me,
walking all around me in a leisurely way
while standing in my embracing shade.