Verse dedicated to facileness, to saying nothing.
We too yearn to be abstract and obscure. We will dwell
on our feelings and life, neither worthy of contemplation.
Yes, today’s poets are consumed with their nothingness.
We will play with those who do not understand what they
read, assuming it must be brilliant. Clarity will be our enemy.
Form will be our toy, a rebellion against convention,
clutter that will in turn be torn asunder. If we get it right,
decorate our banal utterances with gaudy ribbons
of pretentious bogus intellectuality, we might win a
distinguished prize or be published amidst advertising
in a lofty periodical. Free verse, blank verse, spastic verse.
To hell with the aching masses. Death to the oral tradition.
Scrub the poets affecting song. Poetry, the people’s historic
passion, torn from common body and mind by an effete elite.
We obsessive didactics converse only with one another,
coo and bask in subverted inverted cleverness.
Poetry written for poets, debilitating incest eroding the soul
distinquished professors of complicated pompous
tedious nonsense, designated with authority to be art.
Duane Robert Pierson
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/obscurum-per-obscurius/
