A thing of beauty is a joy forever ~ John Keats  

why nobody writes poetry about 

the exact number of hairs in the drain 

is beyond me  

an excess of floral sounds in a poem 

loud beauty that announces itself 

from lines spewing rhymes  

make me retch 

the stagnant state of poetry owes to this— 

indifference to the ugly  

I for once would like to read a poem  

about French knots on thighs 

remnants of chickenpox from youth, 

leftover rice and sambaarthat stinks, 

the colour and nature of your earwax, 

the depth of your childhood wound  

when you fell on the road while  

running to catch the bus in rain, 

the exact shape of period blood 

on your soon-to-be-disposed pad 

if you write about these things, holler 

for nothing lasts forever