we poets do not need you

Many say the age of the book has passed;
there's something to this
but not everything

But it means nothing
because great poems were never books,
just stored in them
like gems are stored in the earth,
whisky in a cask,
bullets in a gun

Except these things
are ridiculously honored
by being compared to real poetry
(as is most of what goes for poetry)

Poetry is ideas in performance
truth in sound
great literature in a minute

And the best thing about poetry
is that there's no money in it,
a fact that costs me considerably

and yet maybe you could spare some
considering that most of your markets
will evaporate in mushroom clouds,
your pop cultures will pop
even more than those of past decades and centuries
being as they are especially decadent and shallow,
and your nice houses, jobs, and cars
may turn to modernistic deserts

But we poets and our poems will survive
along with those of past millennia,
perhaps in palaces
perhaps in Li Bai huts

So make your money,
make your movies,
make your reality shows,
fuck your bimbos,
and create your inferior, spoiled children

It's shit and mushrooms will grow in it