Absolutely Modern

A tribute to the "Mozart of poetry", French poet Arthur Rimbaud...

 One must be absolutely modern…
                                      --Arthur Rimbaud

There will never be another poet
	like Rimbaud
               who sailed
hallucinatory seas shimmering
   	like a rainbow
	       who assailed
parlors of bourgeois literature
in his drunken boat
	with poetic guns a-blazing
	       like Rambo
       	           and wailed
 about his mission 
	like a muezzin
	from the highest chateau
only for a pistol’s shout
	to knock out 
                his ecstatic poison
where he fell to Earth
        to become just 
                another money-hungry Joe

Today a skateboard scrapes the sidewalk
              like a nail 
              on chalkboard 
a craterfaced dude 
        lacquered in tattoos
 	oozes with ‘tude
(which works when you’re 
        seventeen
        bored and alone)
He fires off his theory
          of poetry a-blazing
        	  to a literary zine 
as his finger taps the screen
   	  of his new book
stored on his smartphone
            He doesn’t give a crap
            about Rimbaud
                   cause it’s all about rap
and hopes his email
           will sting the editor’s 
                         soft-poached eyes like mace…

A Mailer Daemon laughs 
            from behind the screen
 			          and points an
“undelivered” 
           fingernail at mooncrater’s 
                                             pouty face