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This writing was accepted for publication in the 96 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “am I really extinct” Down in the Dirt (v122) (the Mar./Apr. 2014 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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Allegory of the Poet
(NOTE: Cher – successful singer, 20-21C.)

Frederick Pollack

The position of the poet in our society
is that of a beachcomber
who would rather live inland –
say in the mountains. But since the
beaches in our society
are either public or private, he enjoys
a privileged position.
(So they tell him.) The hut
is chilly and damp, the salt
coats everything, and he must make do
with flotsam. Now flotsam
isn’t necessarily old. The sea
brings in fragments
of the latest thing, of the future,
even of other worlds, but the problem is
they’re flotsam.

                    As to the job
itself: whether the thoughts
the poet has, stomping, increasingly
stiffly, among the dunes, are sublime or useful
is a matter of taste
and taste is what,
increasingly, they involve. At sunset a
great, lifegiving
ball of bad taste
sinks into the sea. Sometimes Oscar or Kemo
drives up from Malibu
in a stretch limo. He brings with him
his entourage – goons, flacks, suits
who exclaim
How splendid; girls,
fantastical assemblages who
peer ( ... in years past, the poet
wondered how they felt
in their bodies, then in their ability
to cause desire,
then in the whole
vicarious-power setup; now he
more or less knows). And they lay out
the sort of banquet
Stalin and Beria enjoyed
all night in the homes
of selected victims, leaving no leftovers. Waving a
chicken wing, Oscar sobs, “I really
love you, man ... what you are doing
is so real, so necessary–” etc.
Gazing at him
the poet thinks, There’s no
way he will lend me
his place in the mountains, but (just in case)
improvises: The sea
is the form of thought, terror the content and so on
until they leave.

                     Afterwards, he walks
on the beach. The sweater is warm,
the heart beats. At the zenith, the gulls wheel
symbolically and hungrily, then settle near
the old wreck. The poet measures
the day’s take: driftwood.
Styrofoam. The usual bar
of kryptonite. A gaudy crucifix
dropped by some bordercrosser.
A bulging and rusted drum marked HAZMAT.

He judges these but thinks (as I say)
always and only of
the mountains: clean air and streams,
unfriable rocks,
surviving secretive trees, frugal noises
released from the endless fflupshh fflupshh,
stars emerging
from haze at night, and, at night,
the view of the mountains –
miles and miles of mountains and forest
with a few poignant lights and the light
of some gentrified town – that extends,
he has heard,
from Cher’s john.

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