Are we there yet?

are you ready for this?
forget I asked there’s no way
you could be ready for what has to follow
the necessity of the next is not in dispute
I use my vocabulary to enthuse, not confuse
all the English syllabuses want to include me
all the publishers wish I was on their list
all the open stages are empty without me
the radio is white noise when I’m not there
everyone adds me & friends & retweets me
I’m the poet the world has been waiting for
the king of words, the master of phrases
I make it look easy
I make it look good
I make it look like a viable god-damn career path
I make you want to try it for yourself
poets wreck lives? who told you that?
it’s the opposite that’s true: this poet
is going to unwreck your life
spitting poetic seeds out of my mouth
right into your mind & in no time
a poet tree growing out of your brain
filling your eyes & your ears & mouth
my face on T-shirts and billboards
my words dancing out of the sky, carried high
by radio & television, the net & the publishers
none of them can get enough
fill the dictionary with words and still run out of pages
read it quick before the pages burn
damn your pentameters, alexandrines & tetrameters,
I wear double dactyls as ring-finger jewelery
(apologies, ladies, this poet is taken)
these rhythms I supercede them all
this is the freest verse you’ll find
freeing its listeners from the jails in their mind
coming at you so fast I’m bathed in red light
calculate the doppler shift if you think you’ve got the math
poetry with precision on a subatomic scale
I’m the poet of the superstring, of the gravitino, of the tachyon
I’m the poet of higher dimensions
I’m the sphere to your square, I’m a hypercube
crucifying pretender poets using words as nails
inventing the words for what I do with words
so fast I take on infinite mass
a perpetual motion poetry machine
no blank page has enough space
no laser can carve the path I trace
resisting capture, transcending media
the words I put forth are words at their purest
distilled to the essence of language & meaning
straight to the bloodstream straight to the heart
crossing the blood-brain barrier & back
I’m the poet laureate of the human race
leaving shattered minds & microphones in my wake

(this poem originally appeared in Four W #21 back in late 2010, and was previously discussed re: its post-acceptance editing here)