a poet’s house

I have stacks of poetry books

all over the house

ones I am reading, ones I will

ones I promised to read, but forgot

books of friends that deserve to be heard

I have manuscripts on my computer

and in folders on my desk

I have poems for my many moods

Joy Harjo’s on the porch at sunrise

Natasha Tretheway and Langston Hughes

for when I’m thinking violent revolution

and need to learn patience

Williams Carlos Williams for brevity

Ann Sexton for when the subconscious takes

pot shots from the past

Robert Frost because he has lines riddled with truisms

Carl Sandburg because excellence has its place

Emily Dickinson to fill the cracks of loneliness

Maya Angelo because a caged bird sings beautifully

Walt Whitman because even his prejudices

speak of America

John Donne because love always has a place

Blake and Herbert because they touched the sublime

Neruda to read over dinner

Lorca when you need brush strokes of emotion

Rumi, but only Coleman Barks translations

e.e. cummings because wtf moments are important

Keats, Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell

if for no other reason than for who they influenced

Allen Ginsberg because you still hope to find

one brilliant line he wrote after, Howl

Ferlinghetti because he’s Ferlinghetti

T.S. Eliot sits on the bottom of a stack

on a top shelf, because rich arrogant assholes

need a place to go die

Rupi Kaur and her social media stardom

Sanchez, Lorde, Olds, Gibson, Alexander

Kumin, Rich, Walker, Parker, H.D.

Sylvia Plath resonates with women

Edna’s cape and naked swimming parties

because women poets speak to a place in me

that men poets just can’t reach

I take Wallace Stevens to the bathroom

because this is where I do my best thinking

he has a poem to fit every bowel movement

and an old man who will fist fight

a younger Ernest Hemingway

drunk in the middle of a Key West street

deserves a place in my life

and, of course, sly Billy Collins reminds me

how good humor in verse can be

8-17-20