Someone had better be prepared for rage

I saw a child, a half-bald little Chinese boy stumbling through the library with both hands in his mouth and perturbed eyes absorbing everything and I thought of the newness and hunger of his youth; he was a little copy of his father -- he was going to be his father. I wanted to smash him against the display case where someone has set up a series of stupid post-modern pieces illustrating an even more senseless poem. The dignity of poetry and poetry workshops, having a "thesis" for your poem, saying "something", I want to vomit all over their pretentious little round-table (round because everyone's equal, of course). Shouldn't we destroy meaning along with our children? Isn't this stupid little Chinese boy the seed of all our problems? Aren't we growing into the same wars, anxieties, and heartbreaks? Oh, the poet moans, humanity is a tragedy! Oh! But we can do something about it. We can grab sledge-hammers and smatter all the streets with the blood of our children -- that would serve everyone right who ever winced comfortably at those made for TV compassion buffets. Then we could grow old, suffer, and die. But no more youth.

Cuff-links floating in a drop of milk, dilating with the sponge
Of a giant space, gnawed fingers, ten, half-crowd a little throat,
As he would eat himself -- the jaundiced boy, sanguine,
Whose father sits, serene, and gluts himself on treasures
From my education's hoard of crumpled words. This whelp
Awes at an alien cavern of conjoint bricks and titan shelves,
Cases carefully sating N. Calloway's art, vane prints
To illustrate some cardboard-scribble senseless, expressing,
Just that. What the poet wrote his workshop mulled,
Carefully -- due credit to the artist, to his rituals, meticulous
Symbols, genius jagged ends, all very peculiar wings (oh so dear),
A little bird prepared to chirp some edgy tune for the people,
Really spiritual people, to understand. Save me, the illiterate
Chink leans at his father's knees, whose sledge hand
Absently caresses a few ragged weeds, rubs his dull scalp.