POEM OF THE DAY BY PAUL CORMAN ROBERTS

THE LAST POEM I WILL EVER WRITE ABOUT POETRY
OR POETZ FOR REALZ I SWEAR THIS TIME

Contrary to popular belief
The poets are the last
To be killed or driven out
When the various gurgling pockets of
White/educated/liberal/entitlement
Begin to fracture, shrink, divide and multiply
Into a foamy disaffectation
Beneath the economic pressure
That makes a liar out of everyone
Who claimed they had faith
In civilization.

Poets used to be the elite of course;
In the days when only the elite
Were allowed to read and write.

Since then, no practice or profession
Has so sycophantically embedded itself
Into the columns of society
Than that of “poet.”

And this is because genuine poets
Are genuine slaves to words.
And words have always been used
To divide and fracture and
Separate and segregate.
And there is none of this
That is new.

But what the liberal white intellectuals
Tend to forget
Is that while Western Civilization
Faces many humiliating and degrading mileposts
On its slide down history’s timeline
There is still actually quite a long way to go.

But make no mistake about it
And let’s be perfectly clear on this

When the authorities
Begin rounding up the poets
And incarcerating them
En masse,
You can be sure that
It is not the beginning of the end

But a sure sign
That the whole shithouse
Has already gone up in flames.

-Paul Corman Roberts