[New-Poetry] mo natterin' bout po no matterin'

[JforJames at aol.com]

Cant Poetry Mutter
 
     Sonny, I knew Jack  Kerouac,
and you’re no Jack Kerouac.
 
In my day we had none 
of those stinking MFA programs.
We wrote in  holds of tramp freighters off Madagascar, 
on barstools boring into winter  nights in Fairbanks 
and in boxcars strumming the rails of Andalusia.
We  made our own paper, too. From lint 
picked from our navels or by unraveling  
the butts collected along the sidewalk. 
There was no Google, the  libraries were fucking 
chockfull of books, and you had to read ‘em all,  
and none of ‘em had any pictures. Our words 
weren’t processed like bad  cheese. And le’me tell you, 
when we gave readings it was always a full  house…
it was like Pasternak in the old Soviet Union, 
if you lost your  place in the poem, the audience 
could finish the line. The clapping came up  
like a thousand pigeon wings over 
a loaf of day-old bread in the park.  
And the people bought our books. 
We’d sign title pages till our hands  cramped. 
Of course we wrote about real things then 
and our lines could  really sing.  Our rhythms 
were like making love, fierce and with  staying power, 
until the last line crested like a tongue 
in the throat  of a lover coming. For a poet 
even sleep is work, but we had day jobs as  well, 
and wouldn’t be caught dead inside ivy-clad walls 
unless it was an  honest-to-god state asylum. 
You see, we wrote for keeps. For that 
small  print on translucent pages in thick anthologies.
Believe me, Shakespeare and  Milton 
were watching their backs. 
 


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