All the poets are gone
the people without a voice
Poets driven to suicide
some crippled by a broken heart
some kidnapped off the streets late at night
some silenced by fear
some write verses to praise their captors
some driven to madness
some left in prisons to rot
some disappeared without a trace
like the good old days in El Salvador & Chile
or in the efficient third Reich
everyday another martyr is created
the people left without a voice
all their tears & prayers in vain
no one to comfort them in their poverty
no one to comfort them in their despair -

The people are left without a voice
without a Ginsberg to lead the way
to give America a wake-up call
no Bukowski to soothe us
for its all just more bullshit he would say
no Kerouac to pass on the Dharma
no Dharma Bums to share their visions
no Thoreau to teach us simplicity
no Blake or Burns to mock us
no Dante to damn our hypocrisy
no Cervantes to help us to dream
no Swift to undermine our certainty
no Baudelaire to reflect our despair
no Pablo Neruda or Garcia Lorca
reciting lyrical verses about freedom & tyranny
singing songs of revolution
no folk singers & rock & rollers
willing to stand up
too busy making another million or two
how many millions does one person need
no rebels to throw a wrench into the machinery
so many lost their way becoming Court Jesters
for Monarchs, the New Czars & tyrants
such tyranny abides when poets abandon their posts
all we get are silly sad love songs while the world burns -

All the poets are gone
tending their gardens
while bombers pass unnoticed over their heads -

No Poets to man the Barricades
No Poets to storm the Bastille
Poets fat & content in Suburbia
having retired from the battlefield
writing odes to flowers & misguided soldiers -

Poets crying out in the wilderness
Poets shouting from the mountain tops
all in vain the people have turned a blind eye -

Poets crying into their beer
all those long dark nights of the soul
waiting for a reprieve
we all stand accused -

poets gone to Innisfree & Walden Pond or gone to live in Medieval Castles
or to the Isle of Crete or to the Courts of Kings who feed the poet’s ego & belly
in the hopes of regaining their sanity
hoping to regain their identity -

Poets lost in drug induced visions
Poets having meditated themselves into indifference
for all is an illusion they say
even your hunger & destitution
even mangled bodies of children merely an illusion
all life is suffering so why worry be happy
so their song & dance men sing -

Poets getting drunk to dull the pain
to run through the streets drunk or high
jumping head first into the machine
torn apart by its cogs & wheels -

Poets lost in lust or love
& other distractions
souls untended left to languish-

Poets longing for death
each line a confession of despair -

Poets writing manifestos no one will read
Poets preparing for the next revolution
just another delusion of the feeble minded
as they huddle together in a common room
of some hospital for the overly sensitive
who weep & wail over the mangled bodies of strangers
blown to pieces in another war to end all wars
on the tv nightly news but now its 24/7 there’s no escape
& it’s just a video game everyone wants to play -

Poets unable to see the trees for the forest -
Poets plagued by nightmares of war & pestilence
of massacres & genocide -

Poets chipping away at icebergs
taking an axe to our paintings & statues
smashing our glass houses
murdering our mythical selves -

Poets oblivious savoring sweet dreams
& visions of beauty
til they are dragged away
breaking their guitars & breaking their hands
then politely shot -

Poets seeing through the false veneer
of a society & world gone mad -

Poets giving up the ghost
throwing in the towel -

Poets lashed to the unforgiving wheel of time -

Poets caught like flies in amber
twenty years gone in the blink of an eye -

Poets born into an age where poets are ignored
better to face a firing squad -

Poets calling to the people to arise
to fight the tyrants
the people stoning poets in the public square
believing their wise men & priests
who feed their blood-lust & hate
for what is a man without fear & hate -

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