Postmodern Poetry

Postmodern Poetry

I like to always have
a pack of gum on me;
I buy it in bulk.
You get the idea:
you offer a piece of gum,
its simple generosity.

I also like poetry.
It's like hanging out,
Playing with two dimensional Legos,
School without the teachers
Playing in the recesses of your mind.

Clipping nails isn't very poetic
But society dictates that we trim,
And clip,
And pluck away the uneeded.
Writers needn't worry, they say.
They're a sanitary bunch.
Certainly more than philosophers,
Who dirty their ideas in writing.
Post-modern writing doesn't need nails.
There's nothing to hold on to.

Perhaps we've got to get a grip.

Take a bottle of whisky for instance.
They make nice traveling companions
Always ready for a mixer.

Addiction is a trip
With all your cultural baggage lost at the airport.
Students and hippies travel light though,
Because they know how to find culture
And whisky
At a convenience store.

Is American culture an oxymoron
or a matter of convenience?
Linguistic entropy tends to disprove
Figurative imagery, poetic communication
Pliably and expressively alive.
I’m taking a few lexical liberties here.
The French find this nauseating.

It always ends the same
Repetition creates truism
Repetition creates truism.

La boucle est bouclée.
(The French love this.
Then again they invented post-modernism.)

After they teach you to play deconstruct
Is it any wonder we want to fuck nature
When we describe it as virgin?
This isn't pastiche or histoire
Simply vulgar and simulacre self-plagiarism.

If today's poem were to fall,
fall in a raped wood,
Would anyone give a shit?