We Know How They Sting

Promised today I’d take a quieter
line – away from slanderous revues
of sewer-fed mainstream opinion, or
iconic tirades ablaze in egos bent on
pointless revenge – egos, I might add,
infected by a plethora of purulence.

Whatever aggravated and distanced
the raw fissures in them has nothing
to do with me I am sure and I proclaim
innocence. But I will be blamed none
the less because what I write says much
more than its single words equivolence.

Can you say you read a line where I
decried a poet alive by name? Not my
style – not the way I draw a bow; my
arrows are true to poetic form, mere
tokens of the missiles they sling, but
by Heavens – we know how they sting!
© 24 October 2007, I. D. Carswell