Richard Wilbur and the Impossibility of Xeno's Paradox Fixing My Hard Drive

     Writing for children is hard. The same way something as simple as just speaking in English is hard when they're around. Because, normally, we don't. We make a futile effort to explain something we never understood in the first place, get frustrated, then choke back the sudden, overwhelming desire to challenge the Guinness World record for amount of expletives strung together in a single sentence. Then there's the guilt of those eyes disapprovingly judging you like a puppy, grown gunshy of the New York Times for its tendency to cause bodily harm, who sees you peeing into a magic vessel and seems to be wondering aloud "What the fuck kind of cruel operation are you running here, Mister?"


    I'm enjoying the process, but missing mightily the ability to just go off on a vulgarity-laced, solipsistic rant about how bad decisions and bad behavior have impeded my ability to join the ranks of middle management and buy a Volvo, and call it poetry. Fucking kids. 


In Medieval times to stretch
A man was called wracking


In modern times to add useless 
Words to a line is called adjective stacking


I don't know which is worse,
Stretching a man till he yelps
Or stretching a verse
Though I'm sure neither helps


But superfluosity in both cruelty
And verse make me snore
So, in all things unwanted
Remember less is more