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I made an error, sweet and true:
compared my shambled self to you
with all your wondrous purple prose,
with all your quotes from works I chose
to try and read when I was young,
whose sentences I chewed too long
until the taste had disappeared
and meaning long since discohered
[you see, I know that's not a word
but must continue, undeterred.]
You're less than half my age, you brute!
How dare you flow, and cite, and loot
my less-than-sturdy self-esteem?
Like MLK I have a dream
in which Young Turks and parvenus
are more like me and less like you
and cut their teeth at 22
instead of shining brightly through
and I shall write, as critics cheer,
a piece about a disco here.