Steven Kent

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Progressive Glen

Our suburb’s new and squeaky clean,
The whitest place I’ve ever seen—
The houses here, I mean to say,
For color-blindness is our way:
Progressive Glen’s one neighborhood
Where folk all talk the talk they should.

We meet each Monday, half-past three,
To hold forth on diversity,
Although (for reasons we don’t know)
Caucasians only seem to show.
Minorities live here, you bet;
We’ve simply never seen one yet.

I’d like to make this very clear:
On poverty, we’re quite sincere.
We own life’s tough in every way
For those who labor every day.
We need cheap housing—that’s not hard—
Just not right here in our back yard.

In education, we insist
Upon a comprehensive list:
Humanities—so much to learn!
Plus biz and STEM—so much to earn!
Those charter kids are rightwing tools,
While ours all go to private schools.

Is privilege real? Alas, my friend,
We fear it might not ever end,
So even though we do lament
Our own, we’ve learned to be content.
Utopia may come; till then,
We’ll see you at Progressive Glen.

Lives of the Poets

Milton (John)
Droned on:
Eden’s Gone.
Big yawn.

Wordsworth (Will):
A pill.
So much skill,
But still.

Byron—Gord—
A Lord,
Rarely bored:
He scored!

Shelley, P.
Sailed free
On the sea;
Drowned, he.

Browning (Liz),
Bob’s Miz—
Hers and his,
Fame is.

William Yeats
Debates
Irish states
With mates.

T.S. El
Did well—
Waste Land hell,
Nobel.

Dr. Seuss
Got loose
On Mateus
And juice.

Love Song

My darling, please don’t ever drive a truck.
You have—in spades—a special kind of pluck,
But no one’s quite as prone to getting stuck.
My darling, say you’ll never drive a truck.

My darling, please don’t ever drive a ship.
It’s bound to change the tenor of a trip
If, coming back to port, we wreck the slip.
My darling, swear you’ll never drive a ship.

My darling, please don’t ever drive a train,
A helicopter, hovercraft, or plane.
Your genius isn’t motors in the main,
But darling, you can drive me wild again!

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside (www.kentburnside.com). His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books. (Reviewed here.)