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Poetry Reading
by quill Thursday, Feb 6 2014, 11:18pm
international / poetry / post

another gathering of the
anxious-to-present-well
bourgeoisie,
the poetry literati to
specify the genus

an odd concoction
of panic and pretence
so typical of that class
taints the air

i am fortunate to be excluded
from this group,
by chance the progeny of
European aristocrats
and a socially mobile peasant
both of which/whom harbour
contempt for the prissy
middle, pen-pushing class
of clerks, bookkeepers,
lawyers, doctors and
tight collared professionals

i am not reading tonight
or should i say i am reading
the confluence of anxiety, pretence
and desperation
but i am loath to waste precious
time observing this entirely predictable
crowd

i am purist, i have come
for the Art alone;
poets are not exempt,
they too are trapped by
pretence and the anxious
desperation of the crowd
yet it is their reputations,
semantic dexterities and marvellous
convolutions of the Art
that really imprison them --
narcissism is merely the
observable symptom

circumstance forces me to reveal
that the Art is really Survival
not the poetry or poets;
verse acts to lubricate
the hard friction of life
and social existence
but the true Art is
Survival

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