the academic with thick glasses doesn’t like my imagery about urban decay
and yells out,” Your words are vulgar .You should use the images of T.S.Eliot.”
as I throw my cup of beer at him , I shout,
”Do I look like T. S. Eliot?”

poetry should be like music.
each musician creates his own sound.
I am not out to please the pompous academic world
the man with thick glasses comes from.
only myself.
by enjoying my own trip there is a chance I can bring someone else along for the ride.

I don’t do poetry so it is published in polite poetry mags full of:
soulless
incestuous
pretentious
in-group writing
where simple everyday occurrences are described in complicated terms

I don’t do poetry so I can fuck members of the audience like Leonard Cohen .
although writing poetry is like fucking
I never claimed to be good at either
but I keep trying.

if poets and and people fucking are self- conscious about their audience
they won’t pleasure themselves
and won’t pleasure others.

The poetry taught in sterile college poetry classes
by effete professors who only experience life in books
not in the renegade world of bars, one night stands, and the street
has a delicate sameness fueled by their version of correct poetry and acceptable lifestyles

I am not an academic with thick glasses.
so why should the academic with thick glasses give a shit?
my life has not always been good.
much of it has been bad.
like my poetry.
or maybe I’ve had a bad day
or a good night
or have a boil on my ass
or just don’t give a damn
so why should the academic with thick glasses care?

surely, the academic with thick glasses must know:
T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” is not what I would remember about urban life on the streets
Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” which started democratic poetry was self published
William Shakespeare’s collected works have been used as a doorstop in tenement houses
and
all the great poetry, music and art produced in all the centuries before me
did not stop war.

when I find out the academic with thick glasses did not pay admission
because of his stature in the arts
I kick his milk-white ass out of the gallery.
what did the academic with thick glasses expect me to do tonight?
entertain him for free?
cure the world’s ills?

nothing is free in a world where war and famine are everywhere.
my poems will not bring peace to the world or food to the hungry.
the best a poet can do is be accepted.
acceptance is only a moment of delayed failure.
and if the polite academic world
likes my poems
I am a failure.

(this poem is Runfola's interpretation of the evening at Art Dialogue Gallery)