I.
According to this month’s bill from Sallie Mae Services,
I owe $30,000 on the student loans
For my Master of Fine Arts Degree
In poetry writing.
In order to pay this debt off before I die,
I could write 3,000 poems
And sell them for 10 bucks a pop.
Or I could write 300 poems which I would also sell
But for $100 a piece.
Let’s call these poems
“Highly Concentrated Poetry” (or HCP).
II.
What distinguishes a $10 poem
From HCP? you ask. Nouns, for one.
HCP contains very fancy nouns,
Like POMEGRANATE , CRINOLINE, and GLARE.
As well as fancy verbs like HASTEN, COGNITATE and DISSEMBLE.
HCP has titles with Big Feeling Words (or BFW).
BFW cannot be touched, but they can be painted:
Such as SADNESS or BEAUTY.
HCP often takes place outside near horses, or a lake.
II.
Then again, I could also sell one poem for $30,000.
This poem would have to be100 times the quality of standard HCP:
100 times the CRINOLINE, 100 times the SADNESS,
100 times the HORSES–let’s make them Clysdales–
the animal equivalent of opera singers–with giant butts
prancing around in tutus on skinny hind legs,
wild brown eyes rolling around in emotional
protest, wondering, in their little pea brains,
where all the money went, and when
O! when would it ever come back?