Blowing It Out the Swartze Fenster

     You don't understand. I mean, I want to be a great poet! W.H. Auden
     Grazie, Robert Zimmerman.

When you're a poet and you know it,
nothing will do but to be a great poet.
Don't you hope you don't blow it?

But that doesn't mean you have to show it
to anyone, you ghastly poet!
You're a poet and you know it,

but you really feel you'd better hide it
because being a poet
is not for the stout-hearted. You'll probably blow it

out your ass, so you'd better revise it
over and over again as only the most fastidious poet
can (especially when they know it).

But you happily forego it--
all the praise and adulation due to a great poet.
That's how you'll blow it,

you know. by remaining inchoate--
just a nascent, embryonic, shapeless poet
(even though you know it).

OK then, get your show on
the road, you geriatric poet!
You were a poet, and you knew it.
So blow it, baby, blow it!