Happiness is Poetry: David Lerner

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ― Leonard Cohen

David Lerner is another poet I found in the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.  If you’ve read my other poetry posts you know that I like poets cut in the mold of Bukowski, poets who paint the rawest picture of reality warts and all.  It’s why I like Sapphire, Warsan Shire, and Doug Draime.  So tonight a few pieces from another poet in this vein, enjoy and as always have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

David Lerner, “Mein Kampf”

all I want to do is
make poetry famous

all I want to do is
burn my initials into the sun

all I want do do is
read poetry from the middle of a
burning building
standing in the fast lane of the
freeway
falling from the top of the
Empire State Building

the literary world
sucks dead dog dick

I’d rather be Richard Speck
than Gary Snyder
I’d rather ride a rocketship to hell
than a Volvo to Bolinas

I’d rather
sell arms to the Martians
than wait sullenly for a
letter from some diseased clown with a
three-piece mind
telling me that I’ve won a
bullet-proof pair of rose-colored glasses
for my poem “Autumn in the Spring”

I want to be
hated
by everyone who teaches for a living

I want people to hear my poetry and
get headaches
I want people to hear my poetry and
vomit

I want people to hear my poetry and
weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding,
eat their television sets, beat each other to death with
swords and

go out and get riotously drunk on
someone else’s money

this ain’t no party
this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no foolin’ a

grab-bag of
clever wordplay and sensitive thoughts and
gracious theories about

how many ambiguities can dance on the head of a
machine gun

this ain’t no
genteel evening over
cappuccino and bullshit

this ain’t no life-affirming
our days have meaning
as we watch the flowers breath through our souls and
fall desperately in love

this ain’t no letter-press, hand-me-down
wimpy beatnik festival of bitching about
the broken rainbow

it is a carnival of dread

it is a savage sideshow
about to move to the main arena

it is terror and wild beauty
walking hand in hand down a bombed-out road
as missiles scream, while a
sky the color of arterial blood
blinks on and off
like the lights on Broadway
after the last junkie’s dead of AIDS

I come not to bury poetry
but to blow it up
not to dandle it on my knee
like a retarded child with
beautiful eyes
but

throw it off a cliff into
icy seas and
see if the the motherfucker can swim for its life

because love is an excellent thing
surely we need it

but, my friends…

there is so much to hate These Days

that hatred is just love with a chip on its shoulder
a chip as big as the Ritz
and heavier than
all the bills I’ll never pay

because they’re after us

they’re selling radioactive charm bracelets
and breakfast cereals that
lower your IQ by 50 points per mouthful
we get politicians who think
starting World War III
would be a good career move
we got beautiful women
with eyes like wet stones
peering out at us from the pages of
glassy magazines promising that they’ll
fuck us till we shoot blood

if we’ll just buy one of these beautiful switchblade knives

I’ve got mine

The Future Task of Language

the future task of language
is to
drive a cherry-red Mercedes Benz
into the heart of hell
and place a bet on God

the future task of language
is to
burn itself down in prayer and
invent a new code for beauty

the future task of language
will be to invent a way of
dealing with loneliness

the future task of language
is more like a guess written in fire
than a new coat of ideas and a
real close shave

the future task of language
is more like something erupting
than something figuring itself out
over and over again

the future task of language
will be to do whatever the fuck it wants

the future task of language
is unknowable, impossible, grief-struck, mad,
endless, touching,
wired, wild and weary,
broken-down, dragged up, smashed, floating
in the wind