How they Prostitute a Poem
It is uniquely easy
For some to sell
Ideals because
Business of absent
Goods is essentially
A sacrosanct but mostly
A flimsy transaction.
Some learn, early on,
To prostitute their verse.
So, in all the waking hours
They scavenge for a simple simile
That matches requirements, fulfills needs.
They barter reality
And every romance
To a blurred triplicate
Carbon-copy World of Hard
Cash and Price Tags and Brand Names.
In this brothel
Of stilled hope and
Stagnated stories, poems
Are born virgin and endowed
With voluptuous figures of firm,
Full breasts and wide hips where men
Prefer to plant their pastime dreams,
Or conceive their seed,
Or merely spite themselves,
Or dabble at domination.
But, the poem, with this
Bogus existence becomes
An adept, untiring prostitute.
Taken
On a starry night,
The poem opens
(dry and drab and dreary:
lacking love and life) like
The paid-for parting
Of the thighs.
(First published in Great Works, UK)
poem by Meena Kandasamy
Added by Poetry Lover
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