Then let them knock about your upper mind
Until the shape of what they mean appears.
Like love, they’re strongest when admitted blind,
Judging by feel, feeling with sharpened sense
While yet their need to be is undefined.
Inaccurate emotion—as intense
As action sponsored by adrenaline—
Feeds on itself, and in its own defence
Fancies its role humanitarian.
But poems, butch or feminine, are vain
And draw their satisfactions from within,
Sporting with vowels or showing off a chain
Of silver els and ems to host displays
Of intimacy, or blame, or joy, or pain.
The ways of words are tight and selfish ways,
And each one wants a slot to suit its weight.
Lines needn’t scan like this with every phrase,
But something like a pulse must integrate
The noise a poem makes with its invention.
Otherwise, write prose. Or simply wait
Till it arrives and tells you its intention.
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