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THE LAST REAL POET

The last real poet
Sits alone by himself
Somewhere in a cabin
In Upstate NY
Around the age of 95

Still alive

But they all forgot about him
Years Ago

The prizes
The many lives many
Loves he had once

His memory fades
From time to time
Unsure if it was all real

Meeting Kerouac
Was just like yesterday
Reading upon the stage
Drinking beers & whiskey
Meeting all the Beatniks &
Ferlinghetti

Ginsburg was just
A smart kid, Corso a punk
Who swore alot
And clammored
For everyone’s attention

Whining

He remembers
The applause and the hip
Hot beautiful girl with long brown
Hair who took him home
That night

Only to receive
A long distance call
From her nine months
Later

Hey
Daddy’O

What gives?

Where’s the
Dough?

So
He wrote
And wrote
And wrote

Was published
Everywhere
His books now rare

Recieves letters
Every now & then
From college kids
Who found one of
His books at a library dollar
Sale, praising him
As a genius, a poet

But the literary cannon

Doesn’t
Never cares
Or gives in
Or gives a shit

Recognize
Beauty or sadness
Street poets or
Vagabonds
Madness or unformalist
Poetry

Far too consumed
With the fear of
Honesty, cancel
Culture or a frightful
Reckoning

When most
Of his kind are
All dead

His legacy
Torn from the days
The pages of true
Freedom & non censorship

We were all labeled ” Communists”
For publishing

The Truth

Stood

Behind
Martin Luther King
And at Jack’s
Grave the same
Decade

Saw
The world
His words helped
To create only
To be betrayed
By all those hippies
Who traded in their love
For the mighty dollar

“Sorry”

But we can’t
Publish you

Your work
Just doesn’t
Seem to fit

We just want
To hear another
Version of the same old
Shit we just published
Last week

“Fuck Off”

His rough voice says

Fuck. Off.

With your
Boring trite mighty
White ass kissing
Journal of garbage
Packaged in flowers
That follows trends

Do you have a Facebook?
An Instagram?

Fuck no.

Poetry
Is meant to live
Upon the page

And not
On some ridiculous
Flavor of the month
TV screen

Takes a shot
Of whiskey

Goes to sleep

And dreams

Where he and
Mingus are
Shooting pool
In a NYC dive bar

And
He smacks
Some faux celebrity
Writer in the head
Smoking a diva stick

For talking too much

And being
Annoying

The last real poet
Sat alone by himself
Somewhere in a cabin
In Upstate NY
And last night he died
Around the age of 95

A small obituary
Appeared in the NY Times

And thousands
Of writers & poets
On their computers
Put up memorials with
His poems claiming

He was a genius
And I’ve read all
His books

Which
Two months later
Appeared in all the
Bookstores

Published by
The boring trite mighty
White ass kissing
Journal of garbage
Packaged in flowers
That follows trends

Who bought
All the rights
To his life

With the sales pitch:

He was friends with Kerouac
And Bukowski before Bukowski

He was The Last Real Poet

Buried now

In an unassuming pauper’s

Grave

~ R.M. Engelhardt
©2022