To the Great and Glorious Among Us by Jeff Weddle

Read your Dante 
and your Shelley.

Memorize whole stanzas 
of approved verse 
or even long poems 
to recite 
whenever someone 
might be around 
to listen. 

Dress erratically. 

Drink only imported tea 
unless a decent red wine 
is available. 

Wear your hair 
as though you live 
inside a hurricane.

 
Eat dainty biscuits 
and pine for praise 
from the worthies. 

Love only women 
who are out of reach. 

Read your Wordsworth 
and your Byron. 

Memorize an obscure 
passage from Lamb 
and mutter it 
while sitting on the toilet.

Tell people that nature 
is your church.

 
Bathe once a week 
and don’t overdo it 
with the soap. 

Read your Proust 
and your Joyce. 

Look down your nose 
at the commonplace. 

Tell yourself that this is how it’s done. 
Say to new acquaintances that you are a poet. 

Believe in your heart 
that the ancient gods 
are your patrons. 

Die someday 
and have one or two people 
wonder for an hour
what became of you. 

Decompose in silence.

This is the destiny 
of your breed. 

This is the glory 
which awaits you 

your Valhalla 

the best forever
you, Great Titan,
can ever hope to find.

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the 2007 Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.