Second Wind

Wish I could write obscurer

I've read other people's poems
And they don't much look like mine
I wish I could make them obscurer
And be done with silly rhymes.
I'd like to shroud them in mystery
But I just say what I mean
I wish I was a better writer
And could write obscurer lines.

I'd dab words around my canvas
Pluck metaphors out of the air
Draw a veil over what I was saying
And leave you wanting for more.

I'd like to have you scratch your heads
And wonder at my meaning
But it seems to come out
In the same plain words
There are no hidden meanings.

Maybe I'm just shallow
Can't find any hidden depths.
There are other, cleverer writers
And I'm just way too dumb.

Think where I could take this
If I didn't just say what I meant
There'd be:
Fathomless conjectures,
Museful meanderings,
Pensive postulation,
Putrid pontification
Big words, long and perhaps extravagantly constructed sentences?
But would that still be me?

My tired and torrid attempts
To twist, turn and complicate
My communications for the benefit
Of audiences immune to the
Innocence of my simplistic doggerel
Are condemned to fall on fallow ground
Seeds ungerminated
Failing to come to fruition.

I can't be doing with that stuff.
I'll just say what I mean.