At the Poetry Reading: Classical vs. Romantic—to be sung to Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”

In olden poems a glimpse of prosing
Left something that led to reposing.
Now, God knows,
Prose really goes.

Good poets who once knew singing words
Now only use reciting words,
Writing prose.
Prose really goes

If workshop talk you like,
If M.F.A. refs you like,
If Romantic deaths you like,
If only imagery you like,
Or me not interested you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.

When the only thing close to lyrics
That can bring us close to hysterics,
Is written by SNL jingle-os,
Anything’s prose.

When journal entries of narcissism
Are rearranged poetic catechism,
Then I suppose,
Prose really goes.

Poetry has gone mad today,
The bad is good today,
Hacks are back today,
Metaphors on crack today,
Line means little today,
Emote is to fiddle today
And that’s how it goes.

In Middle Ages, clever scribes and sages
Even sang of plagues that rages
And kept Chaucer on his toes,
Now, everything’s prose.

When Shakespeare wrote for Queen Elizabeth
John Donne also avoided any shibboleth,
And that just shows,
Pros don’t write prose.

Michelangelo was a great stanzancer
While he was a sculpture depantser,
And he fed to the coals,
Everything prose.

When John Milton wrote macho metered verse,
Dante lyricized lost folk in the hearse.
Now, God knows,
Everything’s prose.

When Irish poets sang their verse au gratin,
Their lyrical fields were anything but rotten.
Now, God knows.
Prose goes.

Just think of those poetry slams you’ve got,
And those hams you’ve got
And the Ph.Ds you should have got
To understand lines of what’s hot
In those little mags you’ve got
The New Yorker schlocks out as bot
Like mini Cheerios.

I know I’m not a great Romancer,
And of this cancer I have no answer
That I can propose,
In Classical prose.