R.M. Engelhardt

COLTRANE'S AGENT​

God

Is that genius that

Wails thru time

Like a saxophone

Cutting through

The darkness of the night

Just as the rain

Begins

I USED TO WRITE LIKE BUKOWSKI

You can get fucked up

or let other people

fuck you up.

And that's the nature of life.

Pull the suffering artist-writer

routine, drink too much,

find women who are also fucked up

But like you, don't know that they are fucked up

Just yet.

And then one day one morning you wake up

And realize that you are not like Bukowski,

And not like everyone else and that you don't need the

drugs, the booze or the women whose hearts are made of lead.

To give you

A reason

"To be"

And you get sick.

Sick of all of the wretch &

all of the shit that comes along with the anger, the failure

And that sinking ship

Of hope.

That's slowly eaten thru your soul

over the years and the years

And the years.

So save the lectures and the sermons for all of

The republicans, bureaucrats and born again Christians

And all of the lost who have lost their way and who

Have forgotten who they are

Or who they once were.

Because Charles Bukowski is dead my friends

And he was human just like everybody else.

He was no fucking prophet or saint, no icon

Or savior.

He was just a man who eventually got

All of his shit "right"

And who then said unto all of the masses

"Live"

THE LAST  POET

I live alone.

I drink alone.

Chain smoke

cigarettes

Alone.

And live

on coffee.

Send out my

shit-ass poems to academic

journals & magazines,

keep the rejection slips

on top of my dresser

and hope that one day

when I'm famous I can

tell my lit agent to

tell them all

To "fuck-off."

Because I am the last of the

my kind, the last of the "Human"

poets leftover from the late

20th century. Because I am the last

middle-aged poster boy for what

being a middle-aged poet

Is all about.

I like to sleep alone

I like to sleep with Keats

save for the occasional poetry

groupie or desperate wine-sopped

housewife whose husband

can't get up

Their prose.

I am the week-night English instructor

and grand master of the

casual word-play

Fuck.

I like to sit in

the dark alone and

masturbate to the pages

of the APR & fantasize

about all of the young new

lady poets in residence

reading me all their poems

In the buff.

I like to watch television

and laugh at all of the wanna-

be " pop-stars" & Def Jam

wanna be poets because they

have already sold-out

their generation & their very souls

without even realizing it

or trying.

For a whole 15 minutes

of nothing, going nowhere

that the shallow network heads

Call "fame".

Because I am the last true

human being, the last true

poet and not much good

at anything else, and I accept

the eventual downfall that

I will probably live the

remainder of my life broke,

sometimes homeless

and alone.

And oh yes..."alone."

Swearing

Cursing

And weeping a living

edsel in the aftermath

of poetry teeth rotting

towards the epitaph

Of silence

And attitude rhyming

machines.

I live alone.

I drink alone

And I chain-smoke

cigarettes alone.

Writing poems

for future generations

who won't give a shit

About poems

or for that matter

"Poetry"

At all.

R.M. Engelhardt is a veteran poet & writer whose work over the years has appeared in many journals & magazines including Rusty Truck, Thunder Sandwich, The Boston Literary Review, The NY Times, Full of Crow, Dry Land Lit, The Outlaw Poetry Network, Telepoem & in many others. He is one of the original co-founders' of Albany Poets and is currently the host of the Troy Poetry Mission, a monthly open mic for poets held in Troy, NY.

www.rmengelhardt.com
www.troypoetrymission.com