Lockdown Lyricism: “Elementarily Secondary”

From a series of poems I penned during the early months of the pandemic.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

What could be more writerly
Than using blank pages
As metaphors?

Similar similes smile
Wickedly at me
Taunting and scoffing
At the unoriginality

But I never claimed
To be a poet
With paradises lost
To Milton or Frost;

Yeats and Auden
I am not
And doesn’t this just
Show it?

I’m nothing more
Than filler
Until something else
So much better
Comes along to kill
The time
With songs that mean
Much more than mine

‘Til then, I’ll be your
Second best
Never forgetting I’m only here
At your behest

So hook me
And crook me
When I fail
The test

Hook my neck
And drag me
Right off
Stage left.