Fish Guts #Poem & #Painting by Nikos Laios

 

Where have the public poets gone?
Where have the jazz clubs gone?
The bohemians and the beatniks?

Lost in a sea of bones sloshing
And slapping the oil stained rusted shores
Caught up in floating bottles, rubbish
And used condoms swallowed by
Whales, caught up in the gills,
In the shit-stained bowels of the
Earth.

Where has the inspiration gone?
Where has the mad complicated
Love that inspired the great artists gone?
Where has the madness gone?
I miss the madness most of all,
It made us human.

Sucked up in toasters and microwaves,
PlayStations , lost in credit card statements
And diamond rings while the soul
Of the world sucks cheap wine
Out of a crumpled paper bag
Like some street bum curled up
In a cold back alleyway
Forgotten and neglected.

I miss that world,
That creative world
When poetry, love
And jazz ruled, a world that
Existed before I was born,
But I was fortunate to have lived on
The last intoxicating fumes of
That magical world during my youth.

A world now lost in bleach and fish guts
In the kitchen of some cheap
Down-town Vietnamese restaurant
Or a midnight kebab stand,
Or with the drunk kids on a Saturday night
That smash each other's skulls
With their fists.

Smashing their minds,
The mind, our mind, the most
Powerful tool that humanity
Has ever known that has created so many
Transcendent moments of lyrical beauty
That has defined our existence
And which twinkles in the empty blackness
Of space like a shinning beacon of hope
In the face of impeding death and nothingness;
We have transcended our mortality
Because of our beautiful minds,
And they smash them
With their fists.

I miss Jazz,
I miss the public poets
That were once treated
Like rock stars,
I miss Elvis Presley,
I miss Doris Day,
The happy musicals,
Records, Walkmans
Casey Kasem and the
American top 40 on
The radio.

I miss the 80's
70's of my childhood
And mourn for
The decades before me
That I have not lived;
I miss the innocence,
The Solid Gold Dancers,
The jazz and disco nightclubs,
That became extinct
In the mediocrity of the
Tattooed and pierced 90's.

I miss it all and I
I prefer their poverty
To the soulless riches
Of our days, lost in fish guts
And blood flushed down the sink
Washing the drains flowing out
To the toilet sea,
I miss it all,
I miss it all.