Fighting Back Poem by Glenn Bagshaw

Great Keats and Shelley now are dead.
They read what “writ in water” said.

In earth Walt Whitman has his quarters,
with Ginsberg and his boys as porters.

Grim Eliot, hollowman of death,
found whimpered end; all bang-bereft;

while Frost is chilled and Pound is grounded.
Their greatness clung as dirt was mounded.

The anxiety versed in Auden’s age
stays calm upon that dead man's page.

So they reserve the volumes for themselves,
and leave this lackey dusting shelves
of golden words, not crinkled tinsel,
that sound I crunch-compose in pencil.

Still my stationery’s I keep for use
if villian should invoke the Muse
to return these writers, great of phrase.

I’ll fight with muck of verbal haze
since fog sets Poesy's lined retreat.
Unmetered, foot-loose, I force defeat.


No, now the sound rebounds, tears my own ear.
She's far too blind, to read, too deaf to hear.