I fear Billy Collins.

I do!
With each fluid description,
I cower further from the pen.
He fills poems with tangible imagery:
women who have never birthed,
night draped across shoulders!
And my words mutiny.
There may be one image per poem
who joins in my selfish cause
perhaps for his own selfish reason.
Naturally, he wants to be recognized, too!
As the line that carried me through my bumbling career.

A phrase like "headache orange"
or an entire poem,
one of the wave-tossed poems I wrote
my first winter on the JARVIS.

But Mr. Collins, please,
your standard towers
and you tell Le Chien of "intolerable poetry".
I pray that you stumble
upon my columns of verse,
and instead of grumbling
turning the page,
that your eyes might catch a curve
or a shape in the poem's shadow
that reminds you of yourself
in the time when imagery
still belonged to your elders.