Vincent Young

When I was
a BOY POET

in high school

I was
in love
with Sylvia Plath.

I didn’t know at the time
that she was a SAD GIRL poet
that only sad girls could like.

We
the sad girls
and me
were teased.

I was new to poetry
and only knew her poems
not the social politics.

SO I began to respond
Auden, Lowell, or Kerouac
whenever I was asked
who I was reading.

BUT before I learned “The Colossus”
was a poem for her father
it was a poem about the frustrations
over an enigma to me:

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

“Lady Lazarus”
her suicide poem
is sad

but not because
of the blood, death and Nazis.

It’s sad because of the Seussian rhyme
she’s placed in the middle of the poem.

The comedy makes the tragedy.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call. 

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical 

Like Dr Seuss

Green Eggs and Ham:

I would not like them
Here or there.
I would not like them
Anywhere.
I do not like
Green eggs and ham.
I do not like them,
Sam-I-am