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A Poetaster’s Critique
Literature is going to die like jazz
as the smoky whisper of maladroit fingers culling
with only a small middleclass white audience
to adjust
to mourn the loss as fetishists
caressing the binding leather blistering their minds
inspiration deacetylated from creation to form that
syrupy
narcotic
daft
nebulose
narcissistic
totemic maggots in the brain without the funk
a retching bitch in the alley cold
6-Monoacetylmorphine for those that treat a Real Housewives marathon on Bravo
like a lecture from Spalding Gray
but, fuck it, the analgesic warms the workday of the dead
Coltrane, Davis, Parker – gone
The New York Times 10 Best “Books” of 2012 list can give me a sloppy rimjob
because it doesn’t matter anymore
we’re in the intellectual fading dawn at this point
and the day draws quickly
as it did on the New Wavers that danced to old Suicide records, without any irony in the
glittery glam 80’s,
in moody, nebbish polyester soon to be plaid rebellion
blinking in Morse code like impotent oracles:
W E W E R E N E V E R S P E C I A L
but at least we used to think rudderlessly
with a direction everywhere
a new dull beauty to explore in innocent latency
but these inelegant fingers that took the bone from its case
are reaching for all the same notes that were played before
better in the all-too-apologetic, retrospective nostalgia
(comma)
when poverty used to mean something
besides a funeral march to
smiling apathy
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