See The Company I’m Keeping!

If akin to anything it must be graffiti;
I mean, why bother leaving the
signature of your idiocy on a copy
of a dead poet’s poetry?

What would you say to Edmund
Spenser? ‘…Alacke I saye unto you
there be a veritee of fyne wordes hereto…’,
I’m sure he’d be pleased having
been dead for 408 years.

Though I may be harsh in this
judgement I cannot see leaving
commentary on a verse by John
Donne, or even the late Langston
Hughes, would amuse or entertain
these now dead greats.

All the same I am tempted
to place a comment on William
Shakespeare’s sonnets, explaining
how much I hated him
because I had to learn
them word for word.

But I suspect the true motivation
is bound in the desire to see one’s
name in print, albeit nonsensically,
at the foot of a great poet’s verse.
It says, ‘Look at me, see the company
I’m keeping!’
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-11