JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

The poetry assignment was too dense, I fumbled

my ears rang syllables and rhyming sounds

last night I spied a metaphor, a grayish ball with

brown appendage, button eyes, it scuttled across my

notebook page and disappeared into a question mark

 

It’s tail, like Amerigo Vespucci hauling up the flag

a madman shouting ‘land brothers land’

how could he understand that voyage of discovery

the bearers of his Christian name would take

 

But I digress, life’s but a mess of pottage I wrote

my quill no longer still, deleting words like cottage

substituting house, nib poised to kill that dratted

mouse that nibbled, gnawed and scribbled between

my lines, gobbling the dots over my eyes, the crosses

on my tees, leaving a trail of droppings

and. full. stopped. enjambments.

 

The hour was late and still I stumbled, searching

for some inspiration, my eyes were closing almost

dozing now, I penned a few quick phrases in irritation

like dictation wrote:

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

that floats on high above a crowd

of pattering feet and waving tails

 

A piper leaving Hamelin could not do better

than drown those rodents in a plagiaristic

sea of letters

 

The English master gave me a zero, the rat