Clichés In Bad Taste

Pretentious old poets finagle words once used in place
of their failed physical presence, attempt to usurp
where their powers once used to command –
dwindled since to damp and hollow innuendo;

they dress grandiose and pretend or stretch
imagination with strut-bouffant inventions;
combing a lack of hair that once stood aloof,
afire and untamed in smooth, denatured tho’

artificial locks drawn across wrinkled pate. I
stand at the museum’s gate and gaze reverent
at busts of the late great bestowed on
ivory pedestals by a generation in awe,

aware there is no room for them; their words
are toxic insect waste, ritual gyrations of an
antique form, a crude parody of the mating
– artifice and sad clichés in bad taste...
© 3 June 2007, I.D. Carswell