The Bad Poet by John Grochalski

the bad poet
is always online
starting shit with other poets on social media
you poets aren’t real enough, he says
whatever that means
you’re all a bunch of fakes!
bukowski rip-offs!
even though his poems read
like he wrote them on the shitter
during a bad bout of diarrhea
with a copy of love is a dog from hell on his lap
the bad poet
is the only true poet
according to himself
he’s doing things that no one has ever done before
he’s rewriting the dictionary for christ’s sake
he has the word original tattooed on his ass
and he’s managed to fool
a few online magazines
they’ve taken his poems about being a real poet
poems about how shit the scene is in every city
and how society is such artifice
the bad poet
he’s in all the issues
next to all the other plastic bad-asses
writing about the same exact thing
anemic wordslingers duking it out for the lawn chair throne
a bunch of little dictators in online rags
that no one will read except their husbands and wives
the bad poet
has declared himself the genius amidst fools
but he’s just history repeating itself over and over again
and he’ll keep writing his doggerel
just to get a rise out of the insipid hoi polloi
that only exists in his mind
or to piss off his mom and dad
he’ll keep writing even though he’s just as dull
as all of the other bad poets out there
another mind-numbing voice in a cacophony of nitwits
who can spell correctly
waiting on the next bad poet to come around
with his ass full of brilliance
shaking his tail feathers
calling him just a wimpy poser too.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the section that doesn’t have the bike sharing program.