The Language of the Lost

 
Poetry websites are like bars
you never know what you'll find
when you peek through the door
A straight laced crowd
who turn and stare as one
poring frostily over their darling
cliquey-cloo lines
eulogizing semi-colon placement
sessing over meter and rhyme
or Nazi spellcheckers
retired teachers and little old ladies
in life as nice as pie
who goosestep through a crit
and say they'll never read free verse
because then poetry might die

There's the shoal of party animals
forum fish who welcome the world
with an outstretched keyboard
swapping comedy clips on YouTube
who never wrote a poem in their lives
And sugar loaded vanity sites
a kiss for me means a kiss for you
in a sea of emoticon bile
sweet enough to rot your teeth
with a single honeypot smile
There's sites that want your money
or to sell your data
bogus publishing fraud
sites over run by trolls
or run by over zealous mods
because the webmaster died
or just had enough and got bored

But to me poetry websites
seem mostly like the pretty girl
sat all alone at the end of the bar
You'd love to
order her a cab
recite a line or two together
before you share the ride home
then wake up in the morning
drowning in her big brown eyes
until you realize
it's only the language of the lost
and all that poetry's crooning
to the tune of a lie online