No One Reads Poetry.

"No one reads poetry," she said

And, ultimately, I had to agree

It had been ages since I had dipped

Into Yeats, Byron, Plath or Keats.

Yet Lady Gaga and Eminem are viral

Pathological maybe, but they're free.

No need to be dirty and buy a book,

Hold in hand ink-stained paper

Made from chipped and pulped trees.

Just YouTube your favourite poet

Or a dog singing, a cat sparring

Or a frog being fucked by a monkey,

Miley Cyrus twerking, John Holmes jerking,

Drunk teenagers collapsing in their pee.

So there you have it:

Thousands of years of culture

Distilled into two-minute clips

Of people falling over

And animals being funny.

But who am I to criticise these times?

Eat your Happy Meal and keep watching TV.

Abuse this language in marketing campaigns

So that we all end up illiterate and free.

Feed your hope into the mirror of social media,

Let it sell you yourself back as entertainment

And when it no longer entertains

Who are you going to blame?

Despite what YouTube and Facebook

Would distractedly have you believe,

That's what poets have been trying to say all along:

Look at yourselves, don't look at me.

© shaun patrick green 2013