Well Bottom Blues

For National Poets Day…

Those sad poems longing for an oboeist
and Wow, those trombones: Cool it
Daddy-O. Cutting up like Krupa
on those consonants, like
Tito’s on timbales. Stop that.

Sorry but I grew up with a soundtrack
courtesy of Top 40 before corporate
resegregated the radio spectrum,
and all that Album Oriented Rock,
Bowie and Gabriel playing the stage

like transvestite Valkyries as if
someone dosed Wagner’s Vernor’s
and it all came out quadraphonic.
And my sister was a theatre kid.
Don't make me sing Bali Hai at ya.

I'm here because Wallace Stevens
snapped in half my records of Ginsburg
destroying a harmonium. Sing,
Dammit, the wrath of the workshop.
Make it new (but not like him)

and me with these damn stanzas 
like staves that chart this mouth harp 
all that damn strum and twang
like that caftan-clad chieftain. Halt!
Show us your MLA-stamped MFA papers.