Chansons d'Instapoet

There's no term, no measure of impotence
For the powerlessness of witnessing,
Beginning with the fact that the witness,
Though the soul of honesty, is crippled

By the deviousness of memory
And the deviltry of good intention.
Past the last bend of memory, what's left?
This is why greeting card verse works the best.

We're always falling in love with ourselves
And paving the road to personal hells
With reassurances that are no help
Except as we hang prayer flags from the shelf

Of all the advice we've ever received
And denied as irrelevant to thieves.
The most ancient of us won't outlive these
Most instantaneous of media

We once collected, bagged, tagged, and posted,
The culmination of denial, hope,
The disbelief in causation that poems
Stoke, the conflagration of all poets.