When I read modern poetry,
which critics praise for powerful imagery,
my sense of life is lost to me.
I sleep disturbed and dream I've drowned
In disconnected superfluity.

While swimming through the word debris,
I grasp for straws of continuity,
a victim of some poet's disharmony
of mind and soul, of childhood fears
of who am I, and what's to become of me.

Their stream-of-conscience similes
reveal such childish immaturity,
no frame of reference to reality
is there — just prattling self-indulgence,
which once was thought a sin, and still should be!

If neophytic speech is praise-worthy —
if blips and blurbs of thought, cast fancy-free
upon the world bear relevancy, why . . .
anyone can write like that, can't you?
What comes to mind right off the top my head? Let's see . . . . .

There's a dot under my shoe
screaming while I stand there.
Under yours a line going absolutely nowhere
yet mouthing vast and worldly words
such as "horizons"
in modulated tones.
We all take out the garbage twice a week
the less the more
The tone's the thing,
tho I'm not sure,
I s'ppose.

The tone? The tone? Oh, woe is me!
There's underlying agony
in random thoughts conjoined so pointlessly.
If that's what measures ingenuity,
I'm lost! Why strive to lift a soul if
mankind revels in such shapeless misery!

Favored now are drabbish words with no attempt at simile.
Shunned are Rhyme and Meter, structures all summarily
tossed to sea by critics as t'were yucky fish entrails --
which screams disdain for how things were
when fish swam whole, as once did poetry.

Such swill at least defines for me
some terms I set for laureate poetry:
To vitalize! Inspire! Bring clarity!
Why add confusion to the mess we're in
by heaping on more incongruity?

Yes? No? Debate is free.
How opine you on man's mentality
as it projects through modern poetry?