PISTOL PACKING POETS
PISTOL PACKING POETS
by Charles Potts
Yesterday I renewed
Without hesitation
My permit to carry a concealed weapon.
It’s gotten more explicit.
It now reads:
Permit to carry a concealed pistol.
I paid $42 to exercise my right,
$10 extra because
The previous permit had expired.
You never know when some overwrought poet
Will feel like getting shot,
As the Rabbi Simon once reminded me:
Verlaine shot Rimbaud.
If I had a dollar
For every time some crazy poet
Walked into a reading or otherwise
Waved a pistol in my face,
I’d have 4 dollars.
Well, you’re 4 dollars richer than I on that score! It may spell our doom, but better to wave a poem in somebody’s face.
Heard a song by that title ‘Verlaine shot Rimbaud’ not long ago. What comes around goes around. Maybe poets are where the shit hits the fan….better to be packing when dealing with anything mightier than a sword seems like sound advice but I don’t recommend bringing a pistol to a poetry reading. You’ll never hear the end of it. It’s your funeral though. I’ll write an elegy for you called ’22 Gun Salute. It’ll be about the Right to Arm Bears and halving the last wo.