How to write poetry

It is not enough that Maiakovski died for our sins,
nor that walking down the shore
he once rolled between his tongue
the syllables of a roaring wave.

I met the beach lifeguard.
We chated of nothing and everything,
of the fear of the rotting nuclear submarines docked at the seaport of Sebastopol,
of the greatest fear of stepping on top of a sunbathing crab.

Who said that the only thing the sea spewed that day,
the same day Vladimirovich died,
was a giant gray rat?

Lifeguard said:
it was long and sleek and tentacular.

It is not the description of a rat,
I noted.

Nor ^^^^^°|¬
is a poem,
he said.