COLD MEDICINE POETRY

It's that time of year again! The time of year when I get bronchitis and take a massive dose of mind-altering cough syrup and lie down on my couch and think about the state of modern poetry! This usually results in a poem about poetry itself, called either "POETRY TODAY OH MY GOD" or "A POEM ABOUT POETRY I AM SO HIGH RIGHT NOW."


POETRY TODAY OH MY GOD

Heidegger lies down on the rose-colored sofa. His snatch is bleeding so bad he can hardly concentrate on philosophy. Still he persists, like a strawberry in the snow, dreaming about the fingertips that are reaching down for him.

Somewhere in Germany, a hart lowers his head to drink and sees the water wet with all of his self-contained blood—that is to say, his reflection. “There is the hart that killed my mother,” he thinks, “the hart that broke my mother in two.”

If there are too many harts in poetry today, it is because we all grew up reading a book called “Imogene's Antlers,” about a girl who woke one morning with a pair—and this will surprise you—of antlers.

If there is too much blood in poetry today, it is because we all imagined the day when Imogene got her period, and how she was now in even greater danger from the wolves.

The “woofs,” as we called them.

If there are too many woofs in poetry today, it is because in our childhood books, they were always a danger to the youngest, pinkest characters. And we were even younger and pinker than them.

Heidegger never read the story of Imogene. He would like to read it now, bleeding on his rose-colored couch. It would comfort him to think that perhaps his head is heavy because his head is growing upward.

If there are too many dead philosophers in poetry today, it is because we know that even in heaven they haven't stopped reading. They will get around to our poems after many eternities, and devour them like more-than-carnivores.

THE END