The Poetry Engineering Critic's Appeal :TCAP

                      Tales from Café Apollinaire
                      The Poetry Engineering Critic's Appeal
                      Gordon Coombes

On hearing Café Apollinaire 
the poetry engineering critic appeals
these stanzas need a bridge
better still a suspension bridge
spanning deep ravines
creating some form of coherence
hiring a construction crew
with all the tools of the trade
working overtime
pouring cement
sculpting small stone islands
supporting colossal columns
welding together steel girders
stringing miles of sturdy cables
hoping to finish the bridge in time
before these stanzas are left stranded
the interconnected themes
complain the engineers
create too much stress


for a bridge such as this
refusing to continue the project
as the suspension bridge is abandoned
as investors and insurance companies 
all begin to pull out
these stanzas are a collage
of juxtaposed images
startling shocking absurd
one adding to the other
the vision unfolds
layer after layer
these stanzas each filled
to over-flowing with enigmas
pitfalls boobey-traps land-mines
paradoxes and contradictions
so be it the poet and the scholar say
Walt Whitman Thoreau and Emerson all agree
it is a labrynth through
which you must find your own way-