Throttled Thursday

After Mottled Tuesday by John Ashbery, https://poets.org/poem/mottled-tuesday

Someone was about to start laughing at me
whether here at my reading or at home,
snug in their armchair rolling their eyes.
But they too will grow old, caught in the net of vagary,
so for now, I’ll add one more shovelful
to the pile of pretentious schlock that passes for writing these days.

Hey, you’re reading it like you don’t know
I was poet laureate two years! So what if my gondola is sinking
and my stewed prunes, my walking stick, await me?
I’m leaving, this time of my own volition
for celestial white clouds streaked by jet trails.
Maybe die-hard readers will pursue me
for a while, but even they get, you know, confused and
forget to stop reading when it turns to hokum, continuing to populate this
mixed-up land with their own projected meanings.
Let’s hope the irony comes across. O bother!
I chime authoritatively even as my brain turns to pap.
My maid keeps my underclothes laundered, at least
she knows recourse to be no mere spectre.
Those awash with the new world, just forget its past-sell-by antithesis.
OK? Don’t be able to understand me.