Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Another Poem: Four "Addresses" by Peter Davis

Four "Addresses"
Peter Davis

POEM ADDRESSING BOYS, AGE 5

This poem can turn invisible and it can beat up bad guys! When people
read this poem it is like a laser shooting bad guys right in the stomach!
This poem knocks bad guys on their bottoms! And if you need a force
field you can get one from Dr. Defense who lives in this poem and
makes a number of bad-guy-fighting tools and weapons. Sometimes
giant robot bad guys try to kill this poem by bopping it on the head,
but this poem doesn't allow that and sends ninjas and wiaards out to 
reverse time and destroy the robots. Dr. Defense jumps up and kicks 
everyone in the face and he, like, flies through a window and then, like
this poem explodes!


POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WHO ARE TIRED,
HUNGRY, OR HORNY

These things can wait. This is a very good poem and you'd be very
myopic to lose sight of this beauty simply because some of your baser
needs are asserting themselves. I'll keep this short, but you should
exercise some control, okay? Stay with me here. Allow this poem to
carry you beyond yourself, transcending your mortal flesh as you wed
yourself with the potentially infinite.


POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WITH CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS ABOUT 
POETRY THAT ARE NOT FULFILLED IN THIS POEM

Change


POEM ADDRESSING PRISONERS

How this found you I don't know, but this is a good event, a good
omen. Not because it's mystical or mysterious, but because you're actu-
ally reading this poem and I have actually written it. I know that this
poem is a sort of prison too, but it's a much, much more beautiful one.



I don't know what the difference is between poems and prose poems, but if something declares itself to be a poem, and if you find it in The Best American Poetry 2012 as I did, then I suppose it's a poem.

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