Very Angry Madness Poem by Fred Babbin

My heart, my heart,
my poetic heart is lost
I cannot find it-
there is no trail of blood
because there is no blood left
in my poetry.
my golden tongue has turned
to tawdry brass.
----------
The fairies and the demons
and the moaning man-
where will they go when I am dead?
and mem'ries of my mother
will never be displayed again
they will go with all the other
thorns left in my head
----------
I am not a woman, that's a fact
so I need not go out on attack
my protest is against my life
and the way that I have lived it.
I am a bigger fool than my father,
an English, super-egotistical,
dandified, arrogant, peasant,
working man
who worked so very hard
he had so little time for me
and made it even less.
My foolishness was in believing
he was most intelligent
because he spoke good English.
-----------
A lesser life will seldom kill,
although you can become quite ill,
Ars longa, vita breve,
but not breve enough
----------
Poetry is madness.
I have all of these mad thoughts
but I do not have the words
that will express them.
I have no more poetic words
and so I fill my headtub
with what comes to hand
and get in it and soak
from my neck up to my crown
with all my rubber poets
and read and think, and read and think again
and the words I read, they bounce around
inside my head and then perhaps
I write some more when I'm so close
to going mad, with my poetry.
--------------.
Edna, Saint, Vincent Millay
never wrote poetry on poetry
but that is not my way
so Moses row your boat on shore
aaahmaine,
Moses row your boat on shore
aaahmaine!