the outlaw poetry network

Sunday, June 7th, 2009...2:00 am

doug draime | digging out of the catacombs of the poets

Digging Out Of the Catacombs Of The Poets

i’m buried deep but i start thinking.
i think of Jean Genet in prison,
delighting in the smell of his own farts…
in the catacombs of the poets
i think of Gauguin’s wife and children,
driving him away to paint the beautiful
faces and bodies of young Tahitian women,
who eventually fucked him to death
with syphilis…
in the catacombs of the poets
i think of Knut Hamsun eating out of
garbage cans for years on the streets
of Christiania, surviving it to win the Nobel
Prize, and living to be 92…
in the catacombs of the poets.
i think of Picasso and his statement
that, “art is not created to decorate
apartments, but as an instrument of war
against the enemy.” …
in the catacombs of the poets
i think of Henry Miller begging with ads in
literary magazines for money
for food and warm socks and not getting
any responses…
in the catacombs of the poets.
i dig my way out through a hole started
by Rimbaud in the 19th century.
i climb out, throwing from my body, rats and bats,
lies and compromise …
from the catacombs of the poets