THE MAD POET
When someone's afflicted with the itchy nirls
Or jaundice or religious fundamentalism,
You don't play tig with him: ditto the mad poet,
Head in the air, burping pomes, dootering about:
And if, like a wildflower gawking at blackbirds,
He cope-carlies into a waterhole or heugh
And gulders 'Hi! dear readers! Help!' -do not
Swing him a life-line: sling him a deafy instead.
How do you know he isn't cowping accident-
ally on purpose (and likes it down there) just as
That head-the-ball Empedocles a header took
-In hot pursuit of immortality -into Etna?
It's still not clear what hurts him into verse, whether
He pissed on his father's ashes (in the urn) or
Thrappled his muse: at all events he is horn-daft
Like a bear bending the bars of his limitations.
His mad-dog shite has everyone -the poetry-buffs
And the iggerant- shit-scared: he grabbles you, then
He reads you to death, a leech cleeking your skin
Who won't drop off until he is boke-full of blood.
Michael Longley, The Ghost Orchid (1995)