Beatniks and Nuditudes

©05.28.2017, Olan L. Smith

I'm beaten down, man, to the bottom of the street

No fare, no care, no wares to sell or food to eat.

I'm a beatitude, nuditude, tuba-tude, lost among the

Picnicking, sputniking, surfniking, beatniks,

Without a dime, somewhere between Cherry and Scat

Street, where hope lays fallow where dusty roads

Tastes like dirt, and splatitudes clash with Christ's beatitudes.

What poet stands above the stench of prose, and the rich novelist

Who whines about his sales? The poet is strung out on life begging

For penitence, he joins artists in oblivion to move the earth,

One word at a time, alongside wet paint splashed on canvases

Used as drip clothes on the garage floor of Jackson Pollock.

Drip words, let them fall from your mouth like wet paint upon

Dry canvases―be the expressionik of today, change the world.