The Dying Poet

His rhyming now ambitionless and lazy.
Alliterations literate but stale.
The metaphors more Lucas than Scorsese;
they're hooking neither Jonah nor the whale.
Clichés abound in sentence after sentence,
no letup in the roses that are red,
nor any sign of penance or repentance
for sentences that struggle to be read.
And yet I sense some hints of former glory,
in brief though somewhat reticent refrains.
A hint that there's a bit more to his story,
a bit that, despite everything, remains,
refusing to surrender or to die.
Who is this poet? To be sure, not I.