08 June 2008

Plastic Truth


How many hits you had today?
Enough to make your ego take
a bow? Oh, come on now, blush
or sigh or humbly say, oh well –
I’ve earned it anyway!

It’s not as if you haven’t done
the work to win a major prize,
you penned a million sweetish
lies disguised as laudatory
praise – words that had to pay

in time, or raise an eyebrow
here and there on how you’ve
made a vital play on who and
where you placed your name –
staked a claim to vapid fame!

But sadly see esteem decline
by better words than yours
maligned in mad pursuit of
plastic truth – forsooth not
every word you wrote eludes

a critic’s eye for long. Shit is
shit no matter where its writ.
It clings to pages ever yet, &
truth be said, best left unread
than thrown at your vanity.

And there it rests. You say if not
a poets’ ass then please be kind
tell me why the case for rhyme
excites a reader’s geste but
blinds a critic’s unmoved eye!
© 22 May 2008, I. D. Carswell
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