I tell myself that fancy’s not a fact
that merits metaphor or apt conceits
to render it poetically with tact
combining rhyme and soft iambic beats.
It’s an indulgent act that no disguise
can hide despite a battery of sounds
and vivid images that mesmerize
the senses to see more than barren nouns.
Nor are you edified by what you write.
But floundering in literary tropes,
you drown in stanzas with perverse delight
before you sense you’ve written off your hopes
by bolstering what should be fleeting dreams
with metaphors, conceits and metric schemes.
The fact is, rather than construct a poem
to foster thoughts that clutter up the mind
as if it were a metaphoric home,
it’s better to pretend you’re deaf and blind.
For should you host a wastrel at the door
or furnish scoundrels with a proper suit
of clothes to cover up the rags they wore
when you yourself could end up destitute?
For what? For them to go back on the street
repeating ways you wasted time to mend?
It’s better that you learn to be discreet
and choose with care the charities you spend
your labors on. And brothels can’t compare
with hospitals dispensing long-term care.
