You Held All Your Words Poem by Patti Masterman

You held all your words
By their little, immature feet
Pressed them into dark woolen suits
Themes much too old and wise, for their stature
With tweezers and brass plated forceps,
You castrated them from emotive underpinnings
And weighed them for the pure gold incentive of their meanings,
Down to the third decimal place; as if it were only science
You were doing, after all, without a care for artistry;
Or simple beauty, as if cleverness could stand in it's stead
What did occur was accidental; like typing monkeys
Though you some times would sprinkle on a few drops;
An afterthought, in case we were still looking then

As if it were all just elements, of a periodic table
Of your own devising; and perhaps your poetry's well known now
While the rest still perishes, in the well calculated risk of starvation
But yours will not be forgiven your indifference;
Using helpless things, like some key to minor greatness-
The words you racheted together so precisely and firmly
Will flow loosely from out the mass consciousness
As soon as the pressure's been removed
And will gradually reassemble themselves into something lovely
A seeded fertility of nutrients, once they've gotten far away enough

We were starving on your perfectly worded artisan bread
Eating it like some thin, watery soup, with supposition's crackers
And all the school children will soon be up in arms
Thinking that poetry has died too;
They had no idea that you'd replaced it
With your own stilted brand of academic dictionary,
Because poetry is nothing about learning the alphabet-
But it's everything, about leaving it behind.