Obligatory Poem about Poetry

Better, you said, to stay cowering

Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning

Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that

Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,

That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint

None of us ever graduates from college,

For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up

Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.
- from "Soonest Mended" by John Ashbery

even though i promised the 15, 16 year-old Katie
that i would be continually as thoughtful, as poetic,
as conscious of....(well, i can't recall exactly
what i thought i was conscious of)....

i shed that conceit somewhere
between then and now

i had never written with the sap
that comes of hallway crushes
or the angst of the misunderstood

instead, my style was an attempt at
philosophical thought wrapped up in
the vaguest language possible

in college, i found that
every understanding i had about
the form, nature, and truth of poetry
was already more perfectly worded
by some anthologized contemporary poet

now, i still have no expectation
that a poem of mine could
resonate with or impress
anyone