How To Get Away With Killing Poetry

Performance poetry

used to be poetry

that happened to perform.

Now it’s perform —

and we’ve misplaced the poetry.

A parade of over-enunciated existentialism,

three limp thoughts in a trench coat

masquerading as Shakespeare on acid —

folded hands, gasping mouths,

necks twitching like broken puppets

cracking syllables like eggs

only to scramble them

into a pan of theatrical vomit.

They call it art.

I call it amateur drama club

on open mic steroids.

See —

poetry died the day

we clapped louder for melodrama

than we did for memorability.

The circus came to town

and brought with it

a congregation of clowns —

self-diagnosed deep thinkers

trying to cram revelation

into advertised self-loathing

and convenient activism disguised as revolution.

You know the type.

The ones who say “hegemonic”

in a piece about class divide —

as if a four-syllable word

could buy bread

or break caste.

The kind who quote Sylvia Plath and Karl Marx in the same breath

between sips of overpriced coffee

without once spelling caste

with a capital C —

or conscience.

And now —

poetry’s more vanilla

than sex in a decade-old marriage.

No one names the rot.

No one names the rot.

They’d rather cry-baby

about their privileged boredom,

whine poetic

about the inefficiencies

of their rather dull,

rotting intelligences—

than dare to think.

Than dare to write.

They pile together

basic-ass lame words

into sentenced stanzas,

and call it verse.

Narcissism disguised as

self-love therapy

is now poetic practice.

Although,

an actual poet

would sledgehammer your face before calling this poetry.

And an actual therapist?

Would self-immolate

before prescribing your poems as healing.

Say “dark thoughts” enough times

in the prelude and in the poem,

and you think you’ve earned

your depression badge.

Without a hint of thought.

Without a drop of blood.

As if

actual poets didn’t already

bleed more birthing a verse

than you’ve ever lived

in your lucidity.

They package pain in punchlines,

wrap trauma in inexpensive ovations,

sell scars for affordable applauses.

And the audience?

Buffoons.

Sophisticated buffoons.

Praising slapstick as subtlety,

volume as truth,

gesture as genius.

This isn’t poetry.

It’s bad theatre at best.

A case study in how not to poetry.

And as I sit in this dim-lit dingy corner

of overbaked angst and misfired metaphors,

I light a cigarette —

hold it upright like an incense stick

to the altar of the poetry you've freshly killed.