Academic (Performance) Poet
/It was in a late-night bar
after some rapturous acclaim
that I asked the academic poet
if he was ever able to relax
he told that his imagination was
‘the brainchild of strangeness’
and added that his favourite bird was a parrot,
which I found typical of his tangential mind.
I pointed out that his exit music
was Psycho Killer by Talking Heads
and that his obsession with murderers
was something of a concern
he told me not to worry because
only today he had read in the paper
that some woman in Mexico City
had been strangled by her own snake
‘non-sequitur,’ I cried, which was
in itself an attempt at social engagement
‘you’re right,’ he said, ‘I’m bored with my voice’
so instead he directed me to e.e.cummings
swiftly adding that when he (the academic) writes,
he uses different parts of his brain
which allows him to produce results
like an abstract painting with added language.
I asked him whether that was a defence,
rather like a device to avoid judgement
then he reached into his jacket pocket
and produced a 3D map of his own mind,
he pointed and said, ‘look, it’s as if there’s some
weird obsession with the Old Testament’
which I suggested was something that
did not hang together in an ideological thread
he said, ‘okay, well maybe that’s just bogus,’
which actually also made no sense at all.
‘Ah, such are the tribulations of
the gifted,’ he shrugged himself into his corduroy jacket.
‘I’m no worse than a Dutch artist
who paints skull figures,’ he said.
After that he disappeared from the club
to the beat of revisionist hardcore acid music
I got home that evening to discover
that my bed had been set on fire.
By Henrik LeGrand
From: United Kingdom