I've been spending time with people who call themselves poets,
or who make a point of rejecting the label
in such a way as to indicate that this makes them especially authentic.

Of course,
they're almost all shit.

I drink a load of whisky and don't say much when they ask
'what do you think?'
The less I say the deeper they imagine my consciousness runs.
It's not a stream.
It's barely a trickle.
Mostly, when they were deconstructing the structural violence of primary school grading,
I was thinking about
whether presidents and prime ministers
have the time and the inclination to wank.

If they do, what gets them off?

Submission, I concluded. Humiliation and surrender.

Of course,
I recognise that my anti-intellectualism
may be faux anti-intellectualism,
and may be the exact thing it pretends not to be,
and may be an excuse and a cop out,
but all the same
it's funny to mock people
who seem to think the great revolutions of history
began with all the subversive might
of air quotes.