Oops, I didn’t again...post that is. Tsk tsk, shame on me. What kind of a writer do I think I am, anyway? Oh, that’s right...this kind.
Billy Collins’s Poems Are All
such well behaved children
sitting in perfect rows behind
their desks, pencils freshly sharpened
notebooks open, eager to learn
something new about themselves
or the greater world at large.
Products of their Jesuit upbringing
they just say no to drugs, rarely drink,
never mention sex in mixed company—
and when was the last time
you heard one of them let loose
with the F-bomb?
No, these are clearly the A-students,
intent on bettering themselves,
on making good on their promises,
on leaving this world a better place
when they are finished with it
than when they entered it.
Meanwhile, my poems are more like
Jimmy Dinesfeld, Duncefeld as we,
the rotten kids, so cruelly named him,
who was always being taken angrily
by the ear from his seat in the far
rear of the classroom and led quickly
to his new seat in front of everybody,
against the wall at the head of the baby row,
or as Sister Veronica referred to it when
she became angry, the B.A.B.Y. row!
Baby! Baby! Baby! She would scream,
slamming down the eraser as she turned,
her furious face emerging
from the fog of swirling chalk dust,
her squinting eyes
lasering in on poor Duncefeld,
who was just minding his own business
when I hit him with a spit wad, causing him to
jump in his seat a little. What the fuck?!
he would yell as the class laughed and laughed.
That’s the kind of children my poems are.
