My hope for J-Z

One of these days
you might admit
the way you write
just isn’t fit
for bringing wonder
to the world;
 
admit that in your strange
insistence that
a writing must be jacketed
within a line trussed up
(not always well)
in stilted measurements,
but need not be concerned
with lyrical felicity
with metaphor and simile,
or any of the elements
that are the bare necessities
if one is ever to produce
some tantalizing verse
is wrong
 
 
and come to know  
your writings always lack
the slightest power  
or any bright ability
to make a reader see
what’s glorious and true
with eyes closed shut
which really is,
as Pastan notes, the goal
of poetry.
 
But knowing you
and how you are immersed
within your plainly falsifiable belief
that writing poorly is
a thing impossible
for you to do,
that you and you alone
are privy to, have grasped,  “God’s truth”
and have an unsurpassed command
of English, too,
within your finger-tips,  
I doubt I’ll ever hear
admissions such as these
upon your lips.