POETRY BROTHERS  (for Bob Charest)

In these magnificent times of reptilian consciousness
when the dinosaurs speak better than we do with
their bones,
In this Information Age of doublespeak and
replicated anachronisms,
superficial in its nationalist slogans and
the religious fervor of its constituents,
fighting among themselves like Azerbaijanis and Armenians,
Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Christians,
Caucosoids, Negroids, Mongoloids, but all acting like
androids,
biting their heads off like misinformed amoebas and planarias,
filling their void with video sex, pre-recorded sex messages,
inflatable dolls and hyperextended dildos,
in order to form a more perfect union of sperm and egg,
yin and yang, penis and vagina,
licking the boots of decaying patriarchs,
yelling vile obscenities at the onlookers,
In these times of microchips, microwaves and
microbrains of artificial intelligence,
In these times of desperate attempts to yell in
the darkness of overexposure and commercialism,
souls dead, voices dead, values dead, all dead,
China's dead, Russia's dead, America's dead,
money, money, money, money, money--
the only currency for living--
money has no worth in a dead world,
Go ahead! Copyright my poetry, sell the TV rights
and the movie rights to your dead producers,
advertise it on the national and cable networks:
THE POETRY BROTHERS ARE HERE!!!
Brother Bob, Brother John, Brother Martin, Brother Jeff,
Brother Alex, Brother Peter, Brother Ed, etc., etc., etc.,
rising up like the staunch oaks of Faith
amidst the cesspool of apathy and banality:
POETRY IS DEAD! LONG LIVE POETRY!
The poetry of the soul, the poetry of the heart,
the poetry of the child, the poetry of the flower,
not the poetry of capitalism with its copyrights,
patents, greed, and dollar signs,
not the poetry of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Burger King, and
McDonald's,
but the pure, unadulterated poetry of the fully human
experience, embracing all the pain and the uncertainty
of its existence on this fragile planet, plagued by
the crocodiles of pollution,
there is no monopoly on truth, no monopoly on love,
no monopoly on poetry--
POETRY IS DEAD! LONG LIVE POETRY!