Beating a #poem to Death, or, The Empty Line I’m tired of my English teacher reaching for the most absurd author intentions. I’m tired in general. So I wrote about it. The Empty Line A pause, a mark of hesitation. Not quite, but close to reformation. A blotted dot, a jagged word, An empty line that begs notation. There has to be a point to this, My English teacher’d be remiss, If empty line had meaning, not, And was spared analysis. He drones about the implications, How blank space represents creation. How can it when there’s nothing there? It sounds more like his own fixation. We stare into this lined abyss, This abscess of an authors kiss, Analyzing truancy, Observing what does not exist. I can’t express my own frustration. This literary inflammation Has ruined reading in itself, An intellectual castration. “Nothing” and “Meaning” do not align, Through all attempts to make it mine, We can’t make mountains anymore. An empty line’s an empty line.