Poetry in America...

Crickets chirping...
Paint drying on walls...
A row of dusty pamphlets, unread anthologies in a lost corner of a used book store...
Corn growing silently under the Iowa sun like so many English majors who can't find work...
An empty gray warehouse, broken windows, padlocked doors - full of manuscripts inside - boxes and boxes stacked to the ceiling...
A large seep-hole eroding large chunks of that forgotten country road...
Bovine creatures in a meadow who fell asleep and never woke up...
Beautiful people, chatty, curious, interested in just-about-everything-mind-you-as-long-as-it's-not x, y or z, sitting there, sipping their coffee, fidgeting with their gadgets....
Mesmerized by the "echo chamber" of their own making...
Middle-class arbiters...opining, emoting, apprehending, taking responsibility...
hungry for knowledge, for a sizzling summer read, for some recent podcast, for the latest greatest advice bouncing from website to website...for whatever that alluring stranger at the next table is saying to the intimidating diva he is with...
So much news to digest apart from who will supersede Sylvia Plath or Philip Larkin...
Stacks of unpublished odes... (ugh!)...
Sonnets that should never have been written or even attempted...
Pathetic strands of random words that could never hold an audience...
Rhymed stanzas filled with alliterative enjambments and allusive hyperboles...
Yawns, long stares, discomfort, animosity...
Full refunds never granted for time wasted...
Ecstatic children scribbling down their first words on colorful construction paper...
(A fluke, a total fluke, only a few more years and they will celebrate not caring so much...)
Sensitive song-writers who can't catch a break...
Prophets on strike...
Because we (the rest of us) just don't get it...
Because...c'mon now, I'm at a loss for words...
Because...don't make us do what we don't want to do...
Because sports highlights on ESPN are so-much-more-enticing...
Because when something grows stale, well then what can one expect?
Because when language departs too much from daily usage, it's sort of like reading hieroglyphics...
Because after being force-fed by garrulous authoritarians for years in school, we beg to differ...
Because we've heard it all before...it's all been said...nothing new under the sun except ...you can't teach a dog new tricks...apples and oranges...ducks and drakes...look before you leap...gotta think outside that box...so as not to kick the can down the road...a penny saved is a lesson learned...
Even if dictionaries as such will soon be obsolete...
Even if the global economy does not employ grammarians...
Even if the totality of ocean density cannot overwhelm the fishes...
Even if the Flemish painters of America have yet to reveal their hidden treasures...
Even if the infra-structure of Toledo leaves nothing to the imagination...
Even if amnesia strikes us at the very moment when we started to believe that something really really important had just flown by us like an entourage of vaguely pink seagulls...but then...when we looked again it was just that strange flying object or something important like that...
Even at a time in our history when song lyrics are fading from view...
Even if memory itself should go under...
(If not for memories, what do we have left?)
Hopes, dreams, desires - sure - but you see what I'm getting at...
Because I wanted to start a revolution...
Because I demand a stop-gap measure to halt the hidden regress...
Because I feel an irrational need to prevent the flow of emigrants into Nebraska...
Because I want to ask you a question: What do you see in those ink blots?
Do you see freight trains? dinosaurs? watches? typewriters? fondue pots? pet rocks? welders? artisans? stenographers? steel companies? friendly people traversing the east coast? canaries in coal mines? letters written in long-hand and then actually mailed out via the postal service?
Do you see a pattern developing here?
But I want others to do the heavy-lifting...everyone look over there for a second...
If you have something to say, then say it! Let it out - now - please!
In metered rhyme or else free-form like this if you want!
And you can even save the planet while you're at it...
What? Too busy? Not going there?
Well then... that reminds me of a flaccid poem I once wrote and stuck in the drawer underneath the green velvet notebook, just waiting for someone - anyone - to FIND...
(Cue crickets...)