​Dream of the Standup Poet

​
It’s the famous poet,
all shined up and just enough melancholy,
basking in the glow of the piano light,
and more than a smattering of applause
as he settles in behind the lectern,
looking this way and that
when he spots a man on the verge
of heckling from the second row
and, in the best defense a poet can offer,
looses a torrent of malediction aimed
in his direction--Poseur, Scrivener, Amanuensis, Lightweight.
 
Sticks and stones, compared to what I really am— 
if only he would take the time to know me.
A scratch, a scratch, I riposte
but then comes the coup de grâce:
Cover-Poet, he calls me
and though, much like his poems,
I don’t know exactly why he says it,
this is a taser applied to the base of my spine,
directly behind my crotch
and radiates upwards toward my membership,
my would-be poetic heart.
He’s got my number alright, and I duck and cover
before he can say it again and again,
the way I fall asleep each night
stuck on the same page of a bad book.
I’m riddled through as if I had
stumbled into the theater at the very moment
another lunatic had become unhinged.
I don’t know what a Cover Poet is
but I surely know when I’ve been uncovered.
 
The slaughter ends only when
I yell in my own defense,
It’s not as if you’re
Billy Collins, Billy Collins.