A Webbed Poem for T. A. Teacher and Miss Thrustful
From a Professor Full of Love and War

©1998 Tom Bacig

(With Apologies to e.e. cummings, W. B. Yeats, Mathew Arnold, Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell and Henry Reed)

for Katie who wouldn't let me send it to her instructor

He said her poem about America was too political and her poem about pelvic thrusts was just right.

I know the two of you,
Probably for good reason,
Think all poetry is about
oiling the universal joint."
i, on the other hand,
"sing of olaf,
and will not kiss your f--ing flag."

While she plays Leda to your swan,
I wonder
What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
While you say
"Ah love, let us be true
To one another, ..."
I remember
"We are here on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

I do know "lust is a jewel,"
But I worry about being
"Washed ... out of the turret with a hose."

Naming of Parts is about fucking
And war, of course,
But it takes a poet to know,
They're equally dangerous.