And So Your Poetry Must

by Ericson L. Acosta

Be wary you say
of its claims
lest you waive art
to us millions unworthy
of taste and manner
lest you be christened
peddler of images
alien in form
pagan in content
lest your license
be forfeited
your ear for resonance
your feel for the sublime.

And so while you summon
the litany of worlds
your own words fashion
you annul my existence
and those of millions
whose narratives you say
betray poetic tone
make burlesque of beauty
and thus like scarecrows
set even the most heretic
muses scurrying back
to their sanctum of rules.

And so in recollecting
your epiphanies
you elude the void
which is my hunger
the famine of millions
the empty bowl of history.

And so with your eulogies
to passion
to rage against time
to pledge withlife’s gift
you lull the birth
of noise
of revenge
of bloodshow
that shall feed millions
complete history
and perhaps spare poetry.

(Published in “F1”, the 1995 Literary Folio of the Philippine Collegian, U.P. Diliman, and edited by Ericson L. Acosta)

"AND SO YOUR POETRY MUST" in Kilometer 64 Blog