Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three.  Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest of his work being supposedly non-poetic. This resulted in 46 poems written at 23.

These poems came out exponentially faster and faster before my 24^th birthday on April 30^th – and I had to write in genres spanning from epic ballads to limericks to get 46 in on time. I guess that means, for better or worse, that’s the best poetry I’ll ever write. Sad day.

Who was I kidding?

Milton was blind and old—oooooold—when he publishedParadise Regained. Emily Dickenson was dead when her stuff came out. My favorite stuff from T.S. Elliot came out after his conversion. So yeah, old age is good for poetry too. Look at Burns and Berry.

(Side note: the name “Berry Burns” sounds like a shady car salesman).

Will I keep up this twice-my-age regimen every few years? Who knows, but this year, here’s to 50 poems at 25 to be written exponentially faster until I turn 26 on April Thirtyish. I do it this the second time around as a way to say: “Here’s to living life well before it’s too late.”

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002: Black Market Milk

Were I to film a movie,
a documented show,
I’d make its name, “Black Market Milk”
so everyone could know
that once upon a time there lived
a people of the land
who walked on dewdrop-laden blades
of grass and soggy sand,
who churned their butter, washed their bread,
who fatten up the sow,
who threshed their grain on threshing floors,
and milked their dairy cow.
These people, older native babes,
sucked straight from uttertits,
like fathers fondle helpmates’ breasts
in nursing time, in wets.
This somethin’ only fathers get—
that taste of gentle mom
when naked in the darkened vat
of master bedroom, mime
and mouthing like their offspring did,
like Denison would say:
She offered him her mother’s milk,
he made a milky trade

both
Amish men and Mennonites
exist outside the law
by charging nothing for their milk,
(still less to use their saw)
but few are Amish in the land,
and fewer still before
Columbus crashed the Native party,
steel upon our shore.
But still they traded milk for music,
mayonnaise for mead,
mint for metal, dark Merlot,
then marble, marksmen feed,
a pound of orange marmalade,
molasses, mead again,
then back to music for the milk,
closed circle, grace and sin.
A thousand years would pass before
the dairymen would find
hormonal additives to blacken
up their dairy kind.
So now to get the mother’s nectar
free of toxic touch,
to find the milkman set to barter
milk for wine and such:
First buy yourself a skiier’s mask,
a camo Gilly suit,
then let your money trade some hands,
prepare yourself to shoot,
then armycrawl your way to farms
at midnight in The States,
exchange the goods for lady’s fare
(be sure to close the gates).
Then, when at last inside your home,
when no soul dares to wake,
drink up, drink up as ancients did
the raw, unfeigned white lake.