Today I posted an article "Why People Hate Poetry." It's National Poetry Month and I love poetry, two reasons to write something – at least according to the way I think – about one of the least popular forms of the written word.

I'm not sure where poetry goes wrong. Many of us grew up loving Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein and may have gone as far to appreciate the dark verse of Dorothy Parker ("nooses give"...) or Edgar Allan Poe and yet, and yet, I find so few people who dig it.

And yet I get it. They probably attended one too many bad-poems-read-from-the-back-of-a-napkin readings in college.

A friend once asked me why poets can't just say it "in a regular way." All I can say is good poetry connects people and doesn't confuse them and, well, we poets are just plain weird.

I interviewed a half dozen poets for my article as to why people dislike poetry and so I won't pontificate on it any more myself. I will, however, leave you with a poem of mine to hate.

Our only currency is dough

I was living this life
and it was white bread
white bread I tell ya
I was stuck
in a lonely loaf
soft shoulder to soft shoulder
like slices in Wonder’s
polka-dotted sleeve.

And then, there was you:
sweet yeast, you rose me,
scripted Sriracha
in the shape of a smile
across the face of my
sandwich, sexy chef
of salvation you saved
me, kneaded me.

So my last supper
became my first feast
and you delivered the kindness
like that milkman, the one Billy
crooned of in the candlelight
the night we discovered
my dad was going to die.
(Have I mentioned how dad
snacked sandwiches over the sink
so not to make
crumbs on the countertops?
Of course I have.)

And your dad, well,
I don’t know if he liked
white or wheat
or pumpernickle or pannekoeken
or garlic or banana
or challah or corn or crumpets
or French or flat or foccacia
or lefse or lemon muffins
or marble or matzo
but I’m certain he liked pancakes
and I’m certain this life
is a short stack,
and the time we have
between breakfasts
is all the time we have Total
(like the cereal, you see).

And so you and me
gotta keep stacking
like hoagies and heros
and floaty loaf submarine sandwiches
sailing us through the disappointing seas
of Tabasco and the tangy-zipped
sweet swamps of Miracle
Whip and when we find ourselves
on an uneven deck in a
blinding storm of bread crumbs
we gotta gather hand full after
hand full after hand full
and feed each other.