How can Poets Survive
from now on.
In dingy whiskey reeling Rooms.
Will another Joyce labour over joyous tongues.
Gasping for resonances in sanskrit and Limerick.
How could MacColl or McTell take us walking
Acompanied by dreary struck guitars, strummed on thigh.

Where will we find the hope.
when Civil enthusiasts leave their diaries behind,
turn off their phones and sit
eager for the essence, of meaning, of words,
and the vanity publication.

Who will flirt with danger?
Not Eluard with his rusty revolver
a brush with roulette before bedtime.
Or Huxley ingesting, just to see
what can be seen
through imagined doors.

Who,
For gods sake,
will show us that, huddled together,
we simple, social, fellow humans;
can imagine anything.
Explore dark valleys over bridges of metaphor.
Slaughter our darlings and
change the world.
Provided that no-one raises a cigarette to their lips.


How now can poets and artists hope to flirt with
the extreme edges of being.
When they can no longer even light a cigarette in a bar.

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