Sample Poems by Andrew Cooper

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1.
I can write poems while watching TV.
The talking heads' chatter won't bother me.
Half of what's up there I don't want to see,
So I write poems while watching TV.
You may see the outcomes and think I'm odd.
A lot of these poems touch upon God.
It at least explains why the meter's flawed,
But I rhyme like a bitch in heat-a bawd.
The TV won't watch me, won't mind the verse,
Won't mark the cadence, longwinded or terse,
Won't see me count rhythm, lines I rehearse,
Won't care I don't look, refuse to immerse.
Friend, corpse, or poet, I'm not to TV;
I've nothing to give it, nothing to be.

2
Mute
Rectangular miracle button pure,
Positioned prime on my long black remote,
To tap when I need the silence to come:
For miseries legion, you are the cure!
You smite and smear the daily verbal bloat
That makes me wish the whole planet were dumb.
Why not change the channel? Cable is rich!
Six billion options must give finer sounds
That pious ears won't vomit when they hear.
I must be an evil son of a bitch
To deny mine such pleasures on the grounds
That muting is better than feasts of fear.
What if I listen to my talking screen
And it says more than the words themselves mean?

3
Dusk descends, and alongside it, the news,
Garlands of words drenched in violence and sin.
A new attack on Paris screams red hues
From backward crusaders murdering men.
Tears aren't enough, the blood calls out for blood,
Bomb the fuckers, now, whoever they are;
We cannot deny the just and the good
In responding blast for blast, scar for scar.
It's pain that they want; it's pain we provide;
We'll wipe all their havens right off the map.
Propaganda's too slow to spare the inside
Of nations choked by barbarian crap.
I fear the answers, so I don't ask why:
I turn off the news and pray that they die.

4
The Blah-mometer
It smacks you in the face, a punk-swung brick,
Makes you arrange innate self-sedation
As meetings with chains of brain predation,
The seething silence that makes you so sick.
It rocks to the top, sieves time to a tick,
It takes momentum away from motion
And strands you in nothing, jail, an ocean,
No exit, infinite real politic:
It tells you no hope, but never despair.
It says you're aggressive, love too much peace.
It says you've gone back, and gone straight ahead,
Are too apathetic, stupid to care.
You stop going forward, and never cease,
Want living forever, wish you were dead.