THE LAST REMAINING POET. by R.M. Engelhardt

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 an author, poet & writer whose work over the years has appeared in many journals & magazines such as Rusty Truck, Thunder Sandwich, Full of Crow, In Between Hangovers, Writers Resist and in many others. His new book of poetry is called " Coffee Ass Blues & Other Poems" published by Alien Buddha Press (2018) . He is also the host of The Troy Poetry Mission, an open mic for poets located in Troy, NY.