#90: All My Doggerels Are Wearing Goggerles (Poetry, Today?)

Epics Need Some Interlude,
Allowing Any Hapless Dude
Who Should So Much As Muster Mood
Enough To Read This Tome . . .
To Find His Strength, And Fortitude,
Before Bestowing Rightly Rude
Phrases Per This Mightily Crude
Pretense To Be A Pome!
Or:
As A Poet Today Might Even Say . . .

It was from some burning
that they found their words on the fiery cinders,
hissing in their bellies, and in their minds.
They danced. It was their time!

All those early choreographers
who placed footprints on pages for our neo-feet.
We followed, trying to fit their sweaty, stretched boots . . .
only to blister our minds.

Like a bunch of Murrays on Nureyev's stage,
we stumble, staccato-stepping . . . leaping at a ledge
over which we once saw Frost shuffle.
And, so ignorant of our crime . . .

we practice the fox trot near the bar
in the strip mall dance halls of familiar neighborhoods.
We get giddy at our reflection in the black tie and tails
we lifted from the five and dime.

The music sounds like static - cold - from space.
There is no heat, no fire, no burning.
There is no anger, and no fear . . . and what is worse,
we don't know how to rhyme.