The voice said, don’t pen poetry no more.
In your declining years, you’ll only bore
or disappoint like some decrepit whore,
who’s washed-up on a sin-soaked seaweed shore.
The voice, it sounded sinister and stern.
Demanding lines I’d laid I now must burn.
A poet, no, you ain’t, when will you learn?
Your poet’s page no one will ever turn.
This voice inside my head, of course, was mine.
(Son-of-a-bitch, a senile sixty-nine)
Who wants to hear a scribbling wind-bag whine?
In verse, cough up a poem line by line.
The voice then died away, but still it grieved
the poet in my soul who still believed
that rhyme, not fake or forced nor ill-conceived,
by grey old-timers still could be achieved.