a.
my worst fear
is that you will hate my poetry,
scorn my words
like they were brussels sprouts,
a detested vegetable left to vegetate,
bury my books
in cemeteries of intellectual rubble.
i would never ask you
to become a poet yourself,
to be literate in any language
beyond just wanting to know my essence,
the bubble-bath effervescence
of my quick wit and compassionate charm,
not forgetting that your mother is my right hand
the dreamer of the same dreams
you should get to know her too
and, if you like my poetry,
also become fluent in the texture
of her ebbs and flows, waxes
and wanes.
b.
get ready, perhaps,
to be swaddled in bountiful wraps of verse
to be rocked inside mahogany cradles of rhyme
to be changed atop plateaus of metaphor.
get ready, indeed,
to know the scientific flow of iambic pentameter
to memorize the syllabic density of stanzas
to be breastfed with onomatopeia.
prepare, young miracle, to be invaded
by poetry, cluster-bombed by lyrics
ready to receive the fallen meteors of dusty chapbooks
and soak up their contents like a favored sponge.
i would like to introduce your opened-up brain
to poetry on any occasion- my own
for quick connection, neruda for prolonged insurrection,
espada for righteous laughter, walcott
for everything you might be after.
i would like to recite, for you, the bog-born lullabies
of heaney, share with you the office-spawned melodies
of wallace stevens, and transcribe for you the pen and ink playpen
of paul muldoon.
i could regale you with the laments of dickinson
for those times, later, when things must get worse
before they can get better.
i could shower you with the pleadings of shelley
for those spurts, later, when things can get better
before they must get worse.
i want you to become president of the republic of verse.
