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.