But everybody’s on top of the trends
they know who’s who and where they’re from
and the newest styles and the most viral jokes
when the album is dropping and when the award show starts
what the president ate for dinner
what company’s going out of business
no one’s writing poetry anymore
no one wants to find out anything
no ones digging up history and debating metaphor
everything’s “not that deep”
everything’s “i ain’t readin allat”
everything’s 60 seconds or less
and they say it’s a waste of your time
this study in humanity
a thousand things on the screen
and you’re talking about love songs and oceans
you’re talking about florida and stopwatches
you’re asking too many questions
darling, tell me if you believe the universe is a closed system—
unless, of course, you believe there’s another
(lord knows we need something better)
tell me if you’re afraid of the future,
or if that’s the kind of thing you leave to the stars
let the tarot card readers fuel your imagination
and pretend like you know what’s coming next
tell me if you believe the science,
tell me if you know your history
tell me where you came from and what it made of you
tell me about the color of the sky and the feeling of thursday mornings
no one’s writing poetry anymore
everybody has their nose in an idea
everybody wants to be somebody worth something
nobody’s sticking to the classics
darling tell me how you take your coffee
and about your relationship with your mother
and i’ll trade you the memory of the prize box in my 2nd grade classroom
and the taste of my least favorite bubblegum toothpaste
i’ll tell you why i’m afraid of smokey the bear
you tell me why you hate the tooth fairy
i’ll tell you about the summer i lived in california and the best poetry i’ve ever written
you can tell me what your favorite color is and what that says about you
no one’s writing poetry anymore
they’re just quoting all the greats
and letting langston hughes down
no, i don’t want to know your zodiac or star sign
no, i don’t want to know the results of personality test #4563
i want you to write something half decent
yes—we’ll hang it on the fridge
everybody’s worried about syntax and grammar
nobody’s talking about symbolism
and yes, it is that deep
yes, all of it matters—
even the way the wind’s blowing and the color of her hair
there’s a story in the line of the horizon on the long flight home
and there’s something to say about the cold rain
i could find a half dozen adjectives to describe the view from the mountains
i could turn my childhood into a page of words
there’s a thousand and one different ways to make it into the history books
a thousand and two if you count an obituary
and there’s not enough time left for me to convince you
to romanticize morning coffee and grocery shopping
please—
no one’s writing poetry anymore
they’re just letting chat gpt write up the drafts
reading it over for hallucinations
trying to find love stories in text-based ai
everyone knows love is for the ones who love the work*
everyone knows love is for the ones who take the plunge
darling, no one’s writing poetry anymore–
don’t you want to be the exception?
*line inspired by Joseph Fasano’s “For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper”
