Tasteful poems
are obviously not these
trifling, day-to-day
things you've been writing;
at most, they're the
once-a-week, Sunday-
best variety—
forged from the clearest
crystalline nouns
each one mined slavishly
from a dark
participial tunnel
and adorned
with the finest
custom adjectival inlays
which gleam
with a rare heavenly
adverbial filigree—
all of which
are then delicately suspended
along precision-length chains
of dangling
prepositional phrases
like beads
along the latticed length
of a flawlessly perfect
symbolical circle.
These are priceless
Tiffany necklaces we're
talking about here—not your
church basement
crates full
of plastic topaz rosaries.