Everybody’s got a flag to plant. When
I was a kid, it was the churches:
pews stuffed with people full
of faux piety in need of soothing
salvation in form of a large number
of people who look and talk and act
just like them— so that,
when they wake up early on Sunday,
they know they’re not the only ones
feeling like a dumbass.
Later on,
it was the blue collar workers
and their ethic of time clocks,
self-destruction and company loyalty.
Then complacent angry bikers looking for new blood
and fresh bitches. Then other struggling writers
seeking disciples. Then academes locked
in dilapidated office buildings,
and street and library cloistered
philosophers who liken themselves
to Socrates. They all wanted me. But
not really.
Like a lonely man
at closing time, all any of them wanted
was a warm body – which is (we all
know) the best form of justification. That
need for group think and the comfort
of the collective mind in tune and honed
for a singular purpose to be determined
at the next meeting.
They are still
coming after me – pseudo-intellectual
colleauges and administrators of the tedious-minded
(The exchange of ideas is a screaming match in which
everyone is hoarse but no one will rest.) spitting
theories and rhetorically constructed insults,
demanding and commanding me to defend my existence.
They scoff at poetry not in the tradition of Shakespeare.
They spit on stories that aren’t copies of
They critique paintings that deny the style of dead old masters.
Then they look at me with shock and surprise
when I laugh at them and refuse to answer.