when poets were poets

[revolutionR]

The soda fountains on the end of my nonexistent cigarette
I don't know why I remember that particular line
I remember when we took poetry by storm
or that is at least they way it felt in those days
before computers, and sites, where the management
on a site where people can go to write poetry
can play favorites with the "negative critique" persons
where they pry your poem apart and dissect it, word
for word, line for line, comma for comma, meter
for meter, to prove they are the sole authority
on write, and wronger, never seeing the poet
who wrote the poem, but pretending that only
hack academics need apply, I thought it was just an
attack on the poets character, disguised as academic expertise
my bad, I should commit suicide, because a don't write like
they do, i don't think like they do, I don't read the same poets
I have met poets with big egos, my mentor had a huge ego
and he tore me apart for months, maybe a year, but I let him
because, I was just beginning, and I needed to practice
I needed to find my poet legs on the high seas of verse
first he was a kind of Beat writer, then he declared he was a surrealist
so I found a book by an American surrealist, it just so happened
around the same time, I found the book, that one book of poems
changed everything, my whole psychic landscape shifted
I called the surrealist on the phone one night, as my mentor friend
had his phone number, and after that everything just went magical
I was doing the complete derangement of all my senses, as Rimbaud
prescribed, turning myself inside out, getting wasted on drink an drugs
reading books on magic, all this in a time when it seemed possible
to make poetry by all, to be a street poet person, hanging out with
other crazy poets, going to open mics and becoming the magician clown
where every word that came out was a thing, an object that was identified
by its very word nature, it did not have to be any particular word, any word
would do, it was the way you said it, they way you uttered them with anger
or total abuse, abuse that word, smack it in the face, and throw it at the
gathered crowd, you could murder the word, shoot it in the syllables
you could fuck that word on stage, you could do black magic on it
you could pull one out of a hat, like a rabbit, and turn it into a bird

[the mingo]

you could be ranker than rank
bank offa any wind
blow down the road with
nobody driving
scream all the sin
into the wind
crowd or no crowd
200 words a second
out of the heart
up the esophagus
into the mouth
onto the lips
forming then thrown
words to wake or wound the mountain
words to sail or dam the rivers
biting or gentle
upon the nipple
fuck the past
fuck the present
fuck the future that's
still with us
go mama
go daddy
moan

[revolutionR]

Damn the torpedoes, damn the night train bottles,
damn straight, damn crooked, damn me for
I have sinned, damn my confession, damn the drones
damn Jean Claude Van Damme, damn French cartoons
damn the bordello Madam, damn the midget tossers
damn the Hover dam, damn the man in the moon
damn the White House lawn, damn TV commercials
damn those scary clowns, damn establishment poets
damn, darn, dang, dung, damnation, damn dumb bam
bung, bang, and most of all goddamn the pusher man
oh...and damn spam!

[the mingo]

what ? damn spam ?
but i love spam!