It’s Happened
by Marcus Bales
It’s happened once or twice to everyone:
You post a piece of work you hope will burn
If not as brightly as the noonday sun
At least enough that those who read it learn
A little bit, or have a little fun.
And then there’s only silence in return,
As if you’d cussed where no one ought to cuss –
It happens now and then to all of us.
It sometimes helps to introduce the thread
Again another time – but sometimes not;
It’s hard to judge if it was what you said
Or how you said it that was such a blot.
How dreadful when your favored topic’s dead
Beside the information highway, caught
And flattened by the dire silence bus —
It happens now and then to all of us.
If you are disappointed when you post
Your scintillating topic to the list
Because it seems you, only, were engrossed
By what you had to say, don’t get so pissed
Or hurt or pouty that you’re diagnosed
A solipsist, unmissed if you exist,
A victim of your own concluding “Thus …” —
It happens now and then to all of us.
Envoi:
Other posters! Let me get a witness!
How many times do others not discuss
The topics we’ve presented with such fitness?
How often have they shunned as not a plus
Our posts about the puppyness or kittenness
Of pups or kittens over which we fuss?
It happens now and then to all of us.
* * * * *
Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry magazine.
It’s Happened (by Marcus Bales)
31 Tuesday Dec 2013
Posted 2000s, American, Bales (Marcus), Poetry
in