Ten Commandments of a Street Poet

I

Let all books be remaindered for a dollar.

II

Bring out a postage stamp with Harold Bloom
and Gary Soto doing the 69.

III

What's this P.C. shit? The whole goddamn country's
politically incorrect, anyhow! More like P.C.P. to me.

IV

Arrest the IRS & Leave the IRA alone!

V

Fuck Proposition 187! Let's get back to 185 & 186
& get rid of these dead white corny motherfuckers
from the libraries & anthologies & panels & curriculum
of American colleges and institutions.

VI

Don't let them anthologize your soul
or tears on Saturday night re-runs
in run-down abandoned welfare hotels
on TV, clean-cut w/ new kicks & a lisp
to go with the (exhaust) pipe you suckin.

VII

Poetry shouldn't only be important because you talk to walls,
dust yellowed pages off beneath bed springs, drink yourself blind
& silly & shove your head in ovens.

VIII

If your words can't be baked into bread,
paper knitted & sewn to make coats
or balled up into bullets & grenades,
ironed flat into switchblades to aid
the poor & the working class to dis
mantle & bust some bumba clot bourgeois
ass, then it aint shit,
it aint shit.

IX

Treat the untouchables like they treat you,
like they got the plague: don't call 'em
don't write 'em don't read 'em don't go
out to see 'em don't touch 'em don't pray
to try to be 'em,
leave them in bookstores & TV
& magazines where they belong, collecting
dust. Seek out the humble & human
poets who believe that poetry
is public property.

X

Don't let the 20th Century end with a panel discussion.