Doggerel Days

I like my Shakespeare with a brutal
Twist of lemon, shaken, not stirred.
Tempestuous fire in my throat,
Havoc wrought from head to sole.
Give me Coleridge in rimed glass
Rimmed with ancient salt,
While I chat with George and Percy
As they sit, drunk on wine and argue
Virtues of necessary atheism
Inscribed inside our skulls.

Celebrate with me, then, these
Doggerel days of August.
A time to write serious poetry.
Something, of which I’ve been accused,
I am incapable of otherwise committing.
I’ll never be remembered, all told, nor
Published, my name in the better magazines,
Force fed to the unsuspecting public as
Literature.

Whatever…

Classical
Misunderstanding about artistic merit
Might have arisen from that which
I have mistakenly produced as verse
Must be forgotten, scribbled lies, all told
No ability, no reason, no rhyme conceals
My obvious madness, this misguided belief
August’s doggerel will someday be a cause
For celebration; a festival of words.

Chaucer gave us shoures soote in Aprill
When you look at it, at least I can spell
Frost spent December’s cold in Eden
Yet, for some reason, my lines are uneven
Keats wrote with beauty, fruits ripe in fall sun
I, though, chose summer’s cacophonic thunder
Season, when the monumental is postponed
Favored, instead, for dreams of midsummer
Comedic errors, memories of the ’62 Mets
Uncorrected, unedited, unconcerned, inept.