Paris,1912 Poem by Stan Petrovich

I was born a hundred years ago;
Made it to the Mecca of art
For art's sake;
Picasso's circle constituted by poets,
Mainly;
Gathered in outdoor cafes
We came up with modernism
By slamming the door on the old
And inviting in the new:
'If the artist says it's art,
Then it's art.'

(I look at the streets now,
A hundred years later,
And am griefstricken how
The gasoline engine has
Singlehandedly reduced
The role of poetry in young lives;
I am so sorry I thing rap music is neither
Poetry nor music;
Crude braggadocio has plowed into
Inspiration; motorcycles, riding lawnmowers really,
Tear up the streets, noise-pollute as if it
Did not
matter: motorcyclists read this:
respect a little others, or go burst
into a bucket of bolts at 85 mph.)

Dada was the first idea
Of the Punk movement,
Take my word for it;
They respected nothing old,
And tus became something valid.
Surrealism is the bright yellow bulb
Springing from a masked face;
It again is time.
We need warriors in poetry:
Men & women with staunch
Desire to change the climate of the world itself.
Turn into pinwheel galaxies
Of thought and desire.
It is indeed our inborn right
To embrace ire...