The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems

by Billy Collins

But earlier this week on a wooded path, I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir were the true geniuses, the ones who had figured out how to fly, how to be both beautiful and brutal, and how to mate for life.

I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you—not one bit. When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling yourself dry, I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

One day I want to draw freehand a continuous figure that will begin with me when the black tip touches the paper and end with you when it is lifted and set down beside a luminous morning window.

Fool Me Good I am under the covers waiting for the heat to come up with a gurgle and hiss and the banging of the water hammer that will frighten the cold out of the room. And I am listening to a blues singer named Precious Bryant singing a song called “Fool Me Good.” If you don’t love me, baby, she sings, would you please try to fool me good?

But mostly poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry, to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the tip of my pencil.