The Bad Poem
Leaps naked from Mt. Everest
to fly like Superman and save Lois also naked
is buried in only a thong with Hardy’s heart at
St. Michael’s in Stinsford
nests in your brain like a wicked wiggleworm
plays hooky and stays home in bed with you in see through everything
crests the foam of the wave nude on a Sydney surfboard
tangos with lions on the savannah, sans anything but skin
mingles languidly with the ink on the tip of Shakespeare’s quill
plays hide and seek with only the sexy nouns and verbs
chills unabashed in Frost’s psyche on the road of difference
writes in red on the backside of imagery
It’s that clod of clay screaming in Brodsky’s throat
and the sixth finger you can’t see on Sexton’s & Clifton’s hands
It embraces the embraceable you of metaphor
kisses every star in the sky three times super sloppily
rides the moon whale to Everland still naked afraid only of man
smiles from the Simile Nightclub
and names its yacht The Naked Pantoum
Some days the bad poem wants to be a good poem
it seeks the comfort of rhyme
and gets itself back in line fully suited
but it always lunges back to the dark side
because it is such a bad poem
no confessional will admit it
So it strikes out again and again as
that song by Jim Steinman
catches in its throat
How good girls go to heaven
but bad girls go everywhere
and the bad poem knows
they always take a bad ass
poem along tucked way way down
into their bras or the back
pocket of the jeans.
—Ernie Wormwood
“The Man Is Only Half Himself, the Other Half Is His Expression”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Driven from hearth and home
by the appetite of the seeker for the sea,
the poem set out to find itself
its place, its nightmare, its fable
the love of its life
its epigram, its pantoumness
villanelleness, Shakespearean &
Petrarchian sonnetness
its Keats oatmeal
its Dante Beatrice, its Whitman mammoth
its reverent Rumi ribald.
It searches academia
bars, cafes, Poets House, City Lights
the Library of Congress Poetry at Midnight
Mecca, the Louvre
the Serengetti
and finally descends into hell
rising on the third day
it can’t face heaven
(what if there is none)
takes a chance on the moon
in all its gibbousness--
hello, the moon is full of luminous things
nonsense, mimsy, legend
has a metaphorical nose
eyes made of similes
similes made of smiles
and a tongue that says this:
Home is where the hearth is
the poet is there in a purple velvet chair
holding a silver pen
barely touching the parchment
waiting to bestow grace and beauty
waiting to warm you
ready to bring you from the fire
ready to write you wild in the world
ready to let you go.
—Ernie Wormwood
____
previously published in Creation Journal in 2006.
Ars Poetica II: Say That I Was an Obsession Poet
Say that I wrote about sex until I was sex
alive and tactile and pungent and as unequivocal
as the new baby’s behind
Say that I wrote about death until I wasn’t scared of it anymore,
until it became just one giant exam I could pass because I knew
all the answers and all the questions--champion of the Death Quiz Show
Say that I wrote about love until I loved everybody in perpetuity
and they could feel me loving them ten years after I was dead
layer after layer after layer of amor
Say that I wrote to you in everything , you there
in the fourth row, three seats in from the left, you know
this is for you, don’t you?
Don’t you?
—Ernie Wormwood
Ars Poetica
We are changing this world
one poem at a time
I the writer and you the listener.
Quiet now.
Do you hear me reading it to you?
Do you see me leaping from the page
to hold your ear wide open as I whisper
my poem or shout my poem or simply
let the poem out of my body into yours?
You are different as soon as you hear it.
I am different as soon as you hear it,
even in death.
No matter how many there were before me,
you are a virgin to my poem and my poem is hot for you,
my poem wants you more than anything,
my poem is the slut of the century for sure.
—Ernie Wormwood