How hard should a reader have to work to get something out of a poem?
Would digging a hole to China be an easier task?
Counting the total number of sand grains at your favorite beach?
Perhaps building a stairway to the stars, the moon even, could happen faster?
I appreciate an interpretive challenge, but if you’re going to bust my buns reading you,
you’d sure as shootin’ better put Shakespeare to shame in the end.
I’m always curious about writers who want you to kill yourself trying to figure them out.
Like you’d want to hang yourself rather than prolong the process.
Don’t you lose a lot of eager book buyers that way?
Me, I like to actually enjoy what I’m reading, not
feel my finger tickling the trigger of a gun
aimed at my intensifying migraine.
If I put the time in, struggle with you like Schwarzenegger and the Predator,
then I want to experience some kind of pleasure in the end.
I hate most having put in the work and finding I’ve been trying
to choke down some puffed up squirt of doggie doo disguised as a canapé.
Lanning Lee 