"The Masque of Rhyme" by Bob Perelman.

[tricklingdust.livejournal.com]

Adding my pee to the sea
of rhyme, it's time I admit sameness

is a bit of a hoax.
Yes, my body lies over social oceans

like yours and slightly like Rover's,
except he barks to speak and we

speak to bargain and intermingle. All's
translation in love and war. Do you

hear the joke about the marriage of
true mind to impediment after impediment?

That's what we call "language," at
least around here. What rhymes with "rhythm"?

"Mythic"? You have to squint to
hear it. Squint and scatter letters to

the five senses, shake off circumstance, and
find yourself in words: squatting amid

ashes while the wicked affluent legislators
dress for the ball. Your feet ache

and stink. The thought-track wakes and thinks:
novelty again, the same old novelty.

It's almost worse than royalty. My biographic
foot in the glass shoe - fate

or déjà vu? The rhythm of
days produces chill, stupor, and after considerable

training, a bunch of personal pronouns.
It's Thursday, history's late as usual. Meanwhile,

some sort of sexual traffic jam
has been goading us all into public

revelation. Offstage, Fact slapped Value on the
butt, and said, Break a leg,

make a killing, show these suckers
where to suck. And Value said, Don't

be vulgar, Fact, unless you're speaking personally.
As for me, where the bee

sucks, there suck I, a mean-er,
a be-er, an arriviste tooling down that

divided highway heading where none, they say
ever returns. And when I don't

come back, say I told you
everything about yourself except the future, lie

alone in our bed of roses
whence, they say, poems arise, to amuse

the students when we've gone to prose.
I'd say more but you hear

those stuck horns blaring: that's been
my cue ever since I can remember.