Playing With Poetry

Today my poetry has decided to play
to wear short pants with a pea-shooter
in the back pocket
to throw pebbles on hopscotch squares.

It doesn’t want to be pregnant with meaning
It doesn’t know how a poem
can even get pregnant.
It won’t today.

Today it uses exclamation points like crazy!!!!!!
It has never heard of Ashberry, Berryman,
Pound’s Cantos or Canterbury Tales
and wouldn’t know language poetry from alphabet soup.

It thinks obscure verse means something naughty
and is not about to get its mouth
washed out with soap, again.
Not today.

Tomorrow, my poetry
may rise, stretch
and think important thoughts
It may have a grand vocabulary

use majestic metaphors
and alliteration with alacrity.
But today it plays hooky,
dances the hokey-pokey, stands on its

head and turns somersaults.
Tomorrow may be different. It may grow-up,
sweat, swear, rework, revise.
I hope not. I like my poetry today.