Why Not Poetry?

One of the 36 Poetic Geniuses

Because, although I had excellent masters, my poems are always self-indulgent, thus:

Every time
I look at you
I just want to steal the doorknob, 
and leave. 

(c. 1978)

Many of my poems are longer than that...

(STOP. You don't have to continue. When you get to the end, I'm going to ask you to recommend poems to me. You can just do that now.)

Midsummer Night’s Dream

(Reflections on marriage, June 21, 2003)

I.

Marriage is a crosswords puzzle

with the squiggly-line convention

for “When two things don’t go together”

and the blacked-out squares

where nothing is

or nothing is known.

It is terrifying really

when you know

you will have to figure it out.

No matter how many number 2’s it takes:

Infinity

or whatever you have of future

That’s how long you have to find the right words.

II.

Marriage is a cave painting

a sort of stick figure hieroglyphic

of a dream of great subtlety.

Sometimes there are painted hands

just as often

the image of where a hand once was

and isn’t any more.

The motives of the painters

are as unknown as the past

as unknown as

animals that used to be

but aren’t any more:

            Five-horned mouse-deers

            Laughing owls

            Carolina Parakeets

                        “They ain’t any horses here then

                        and none now then

                        as I know.

                        They once was,

                        but they ain’t horses now.”

                        . . .  is the only explanation, you’re going to get

                        and it doesn’t make sense.

III.

Marriage is an endless renovation of an ancestral home

When the foundation was laid

there was no metal but ore.

The fundamental rule:

            Always use the simplest tool possible.

The work continues even while you sleep:

You watch your hands pulling away the years,

other tenants best laid plans

stripping away to the rough planks

to find drawings done in carpenter’s pencil.

Animals everywhere

mostly large predators.

The lines are confident

Then you discover there are drawings of hands drawing the animals.

Further on, there is a picture of a “mechanical hand”

It is drawing the hands that drew the animals.

Its presence is inexplicable.

...but they are all bad. And that is a very good reason not to write poetry.

But I do like to read poetry--and I'm always interested in finding something wonderful. Can you recommend anything?