Poetry is dead! I heard it through the grapevine.
It lay there like a corpse packed in formaldehyde
They tried to resurrect it but there was a flat line
Oh, I cried the day they announced poetry had died!
In this age of Facebook and chat acronyms
Kids don't need to read or spell the lingo;
Instead of Keats, they use computer memes,
Leaving little time for Shakespeare or Poe.
Oh, where is the phoenix of legend and lore?
With healing tears of strength and immortality?
We need its antidote to heal the metaphor
And its power to resurrect the hyperbole.
Is there no literary physician here?
Is there no supernatural power? We need a miracle,
To bring back Whitman, Poe and Shakespeare?
Kids need Ovid, Virgil and sophocles.
Wait....what is that crawling out of the sepulchre?
Out of the ashes rises this old form of literature!
Author Note: They say Poetry is dead; that it was replaced by prose and modern technological advances like the E-reader, the internet and the use of internet memes and lingo. But like fashion, everything that's old has a way of renewing itself. There is still life in poetry's bones! © Mary Aris. All rights reserved
