I’ve read other people’s poems
And they don’t much look like mine
I wish I could make them obscurer.
Be done with silly rhymes.
I’d like to shroud in mystery
But I just say what I mean
I wish I was better at writing
And could write obscurer lines.
I’d dab words round my canvas
Pluck metaphors out of the air
Draw a veil over what I was saying
And leave you crying for more.
I’d like to leave you scratching your head
And wondering what I mean
But it seems to come out
In the same plain words
With no hidden meanings at all.
Maybe I’m just shallow?
Don’t have any hidden depths.
There are other, cleverer writers
And I’m just way too dumb.
Think where I could take this
If I didn’t just say what I meant?
Fathomless conjectures,
Museful meanderings,
Pensive pontification
Big words, long
and perhaps extravagantly constructed sentences?
But would that still be me?
My tired and torrid attempts
To twist, turn and complicate
My communications for the benefit
Of audiences immune to the
Innocence of my simplistic doggerel
Are condemned to fall on fallow ground.
Seeds ungerminated
Failing to come to fruition.
I can’t be doing with that stuff.
I’ll just say what I mean.