Nadaspeak

by M.P. Powers

he's reading his poems
to a quiet audience, a tame audience.
a little light falls over
his baldness and dances softly
about his ears. his hands
are delicate and trembling
little flowers. perhaps
they are nervous. perhaps they know
what he's not yet ready
to admit - that there's
something lacking in his formulaic
verse. that his mfa degree
is trash next to soul. that there's nothing
in the way he rolls the precious
verbiage around
his palate that will save him tonight.
no matter how many careful
images he ties together;
no matter how many iambs, dactyls, tetrameters
he exhumes from the grave,
it will never work; the muses shit
on him, the night goes
limp.