How Billy Collins gets it, kinda

Casting for Answers

after reading the Trouble With Poetry


Fish must imbibe in their own piss!

Billy Collins says it has all been said
& said & said about the useless dead,
by all those living who copy instead
of innovating to get some home street cred
amongst Aquarians they’ve never read.

Taken from a person with a legacy
who I assume knows better than me,
who’s old enough to spread incredulity
faster than some school of ichthyology
that knows Piscine waste ontology.

Do fish smell their own piss?

*

This is another thing to not over-think
Like love, freedom, and immortality
Basically it is a measurement problem
The more you think about it the less you know
Like the flow of a river
You can stand in one place and watch
Or you can go with it
It is all relative until you take the plunge

*

Like an URL in common(ness)

Aberrant dormitory hyperbole,
lock and sea (look & see)
life as submerged profundity,
web mates occupy independently—
an aquarium of banality,

a phenomena called group think,
a post modern poetry link
transmogrified: blog stink [!]
lexicographically abstracted from ink-
less mediocrity, a web drink . . .

A toast to a school’s togetherness.