Badge Of Honor
© Surazeus
2018 04 20
The infamous poet with tangled beard,
who always seems to win slam poetry night,
slouches in the cafe on Nowhere Street,
watching people walk to office towers
where they organize spreadsheets of sales data.
The infamous poet wearing pinstripe suit
smokes marijuana and sips ginger mocha
while scribbling endless lines of satire verse
with blood-red ink in the large sketch notebook
while seven friends eat pizza and drink beer.
When his name is called on slam poetry night,
the infamous poet in leather jacket,
and sporting sunglasses like the Blues Brothers,
grips the microphone with one gnarly hand,
then pushes black fedora back, and howls.
"Now I shall wear it as a Badge of Honor
that the famous poetry magazine,
or rather, the editor of that rag,
has placed my name at the top of his blacklist
so that no great poem I ever compose
will be published on its pages of fame.
Every single poem I write from my heart
shines a thousand times brighter with mojo
of wild voodoo soul howling from my mouth
than all ten thousand poems they have published
over the past twenty years put together.
The lame drivel they publish every month
expresses nothing in fragmented lines
beyond the kindergarten mentality
of childish morons who love to play poet.
So no, I will not submit my best poems
to the fool who edits that magazine.
All the little poets with precious verses
intone with poet-voice their victimhood
and whine about oppression that they suffer
then form angry mobs on social media
to join with social justice warriors
who attack and bully racists and trolls
in holy crusade for the marginalized
to enforce politically correct rules
and destroy empire of white supremacy.
We are the poets of the Injustice League
leading the School of New Insincerity
against the revolution of Puritans
who would cleanse sacred School of Quietude
to share their insightful epiphanies
in metamodern verse of jagged lines
that reflect the fragmented mental state
of the best minds of our lost generation
who rage against the corporate machine
by jumbling together in dream collage
lines of verse pilfered from business reports
to express their conceptual universe
projected from the black-hole hologram
that shimmers illusion of life we dream,
for we are shadows in the Cave of Plato.
No upstanding editor for the journals,
funded by the university kings
of the righteous agenda to earn wealth,
would ever publish this bitter satire
that reveals their corrupt complicity
to commodify our intersectionality
with the bankers and the insurance salesmen
who keep the people of our nation bowed
in numb terror before the nuclear bomb
that Shiva the Destroyer wields with laughter
for this prophecy that reveals the truth
would blow their minds in smithereens of greed
to drink the oil that flows from desert sand
for they are the vampires of truth and justice.
Step outside the glass walls of the empire
and you will see returning from the desert
the blind prophet of the waste land of truth
who comes with a final message for mankind
before we blow ourselves to kingdom come
with ten thousand nuclear bombs in the rain.
What does not kill me in the fight for power
will make me stranger than the naked flower."
Tearing the poem into shreds of white silence,
the infamous poet with tangled beard
scatters fragments like snow in winter wind,
then slouches through the wildly cheering crowd,
and flops in broken chair against brick wall
to smoke marijuana and sip cold mocha
while another poet on the dim-lit stage
howls in free verses of impotent rage
their fierce anguish in the loud smoky night.
© Surazeus
2018 04 20
The infamous poet with tangled beard,
who always seems to win slam poetry night,
slouches in the cafe on Nowhere Street,
watching people walk to office towers
where they organize spreadsheets of sales data.
The infamous poet wearing pinstripe suit
smokes marijuana and sips ginger mocha
while scribbling endless lines of satire verse
with blood-red ink in the large sketch notebook
while seven friends eat pizza and drink beer.
When his name is called on slam poetry night,
the infamous poet in leather jacket,
and sporting sunglasses like the Blues Brothers,
grips the microphone with one gnarly hand,
then pushes black fedora back, and howls.
"Now I shall wear it as a Badge of Honor
that the famous poetry magazine,
or rather, the editor of that rag,
has placed my name at the top of his blacklist
so that no great poem I ever compose
will be published on its pages of fame.
Every single poem I write from my heart
shines a thousand times brighter with mojo
of wild voodoo soul howling from my mouth
than all ten thousand poems they have published
over the past twenty years put together.
The lame drivel they publish every month
expresses nothing in fragmented lines
beyond the kindergarten mentality
of childish morons who love to play poet.
So no, I will not submit my best poems
to the fool who edits that magazine.
All the little poets with precious verses
intone with poet-voice their victimhood
and whine about oppression that they suffer
then form angry mobs on social media
to join with social justice warriors
who attack and bully racists and trolls
in holy crusade for the marginalized
to enforce politically correct rules
and destroy empire of white supremacy.
We are the poets of the Injustice League
leading the School of New Insincerity
against the revolution of Puritans
who would cleanse sacred School of Quietude
to share their insightful epiphanies
in metamodern verse of jagged lines
that reflect the fragmented mental state
of the best minds of our lost generation
who rage against the corporate machine
by jumbling together in dream collage
lines of verse pilfered from business reports
to express their conceptual universe
projected from the black-hole hologram
that shimmers illusion of life we dream,
for we are shadows in the Cave of Plato.
No upstanding editor for the journals,
funded by the university kings
of the righteous agenda to earn wealth,
would ever publish this bitter satire
that reveals their corrupt complicity
to commodify our intersectionality
with the bankers and the insurance salesmen
who keep the people of our nation bowed
in numb terror before the nuclear bomb
that Shiva the Destroyer wields with laughter
for this prophecy that reveals the truth
would blow their minds in smithereens of greed
to drink the oil that flows from desert sand
for they are the vampires of truth and justice.
Step outside the glass walls of the empire
and you will see returning from the desert
the blind prophet of the waste land of truth
who comes with a final message for mankind
before we blow ourselves to kingdom come
with ten thousand nuclear bombs in the rain.
What does not kill me in the fight for power
will make me stranger than the naked flower."
Tearing the poem into shreds of white silence,
the infamous poet with tangled beard
scatters fragments like snow in winter wind,
then slouches through the wildly cheering crowd,
and flops in broken chair against brick wall
to smoke marijuana and sip cold mocha
while another poet on the dim-lit stage
howls in free verses of impotent rage
their fierce anguish in the loud smoky night.
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