Poem Seeking Reader (Revision 2)

[lainey]

Tired of red roses
and blue violets

If you expect me to compare myself
to a Summer's day, or feel
that love is in the air, then I am not
the poem for you.

I am the humidity that precedes Malaria,
influenza exploding into airborne Ebola,
rhythm without rhyme,
and the stolen fire of insight.
With me, you will finally understand why
a flower is lonely, and why you lie restless
beneath the moon. I will not be
your Russian nesting doll
for I will never lose myself in you,
though you may in me.


~~~
Good typo catch Jenn (they can sneak in no matter how much we read over these things.

I think the third stanza would work well on its own. Partly because I'm tired of people making fun of 'roses are red/violets are blue' (not that I think it doesn't deserve it, just weary of all the jokes) but that's just me .

Some lines I really enjoyed because I think it tells me a lot about what you want in your poetry were: 'the stolen fire of insight,' 'why you lie restless/beneath the moon.'

The last four lines of that stanza seem almost antithetical to the closing quatrain of john ashbery's 'paradoxes and oxymorons,'

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.