JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

It’s not always obvious that most

of us were once bright new

audacities, repulsively shunned

by gowned and bearded audiences

yet generation succeeds generation

of coining.  Today we are simply

 

Dying linguistic planets, in decaying

orbits, abused hulks turning slowly lifeless,

one side (the past) eternally facing

a golden sun, the other (the future)

dark, cold and boring, descending

inevitably over time into the black

hole of a disused morphological universe

 

We might say in parting – like Uranus

 

Stripped of its halo and breaking up,

becoming simply…

 

But we cringe from vulgarity