JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Friends, poets, countrymen,

having set the scene let me

remind you of our purpose

here today, or more symbolically perhaps

 

(accompanied by spadefuls of iambic thuds)

recite the mourner’s prayer as we

condemn this once most respected

body of literature, his excellence the rhyme

to his final place of rest under the sods

 

And yes, I understand that some of us

(la belle dame perhaps) handkerchief to tear

may somewhat reluctantly turn to leave

this country graveyard, all tradition it represents,

those safe predictabilities, rewarded expectations

 

For an un-metered desert of un-delineation

a horizonless future of wall-to-wall dictation,

but leave we must, protocol insists, the editors

have decreed, God save the King, Rhyming is passé

words bleed

 

So join me if you will in this farewell to Imperium

we come not to praise the emperor but to bury him

and (please forgive me this last act of defiance)

tomorrow we’ll all join forces in fashionable

blank prose alliance