You See a Lot of Poems

about poems these days, in magazines and journals,
but not so many about what it's really like
to live. Maybe that's because there's no
difference. Or maybe it's because the poetry
editors at big-time, highfalutin literary publications
think most people of poetry-reading age
should be readily able to distinguish by now
between what's good and what's bad
about living, so why bring it up again?
On the other hand, maybe the ones in charge
of saying yes and no figure there's already
enough outright life on the planet--
that's not what's lacking, no, it's the real
poetry-poems we need more of, the ones good
enough to publish, or course, but especially
the ones, any ones at all, about other poems.
I guess people everywhere butcher their own
bodies, don't they, with tattoos and brandings,
piercings and bones through the nose,
sacrifice themselves on an altar trying
to fit in to whatever tribe happens to be
at hand, hoping not to receive a rejection slip?
I mean to point out that I keep writing
exactly because I fail--the poetry editors are
spot-on to keep me from joining their clan,
and I wouldn't have it any other way. I
keep writing because nothing I've written yet
succeeds in meaning the things that mean
the world to me. "Everything I've written fails,"
I make a habit of repeating to myself at
dull moments, "and the day it stops failing
will be the day I stop writing." I learn
more from my continuing, everyday inadequacies,
more about people and devotion and what
exactly is precious than I ever learned in college.
I learn about religion and the origins of
the universe from my own shitty, little poems.
And I hope I die writing pieces that I would be
quick to stand up and spit on, that I would call
crap, if you forced me to tell the truth, because
I hope I die learning and trying and failing
and, therefore, really living.