Mission Poem – Lauren Wheeler

Burroughs was a genius.

Ginsberg was a genius.

Bukowski was a genius,

and you’re not them.

Burroughs was a junkie and

Ginsberg’s sanity was questionable and

Bukowski was a sexist drunk and

so are you,

but only because

you want to be a genius.

Being a fuck-up doesn’t make you a brilliant poet and

it doesn’t make you the voice of our time.

It makes you spend your trust fund on a four-story walk-up in the mission.

It makes you brag about the time you spent in jail

or rehab

or the asylum.

It makes you brag about your track marks and read Naked Lunch like

it was the bible.

It makes you desperate;

it makes you pathetic,

but it doesn’t make you a poet.

Poets believe in living not

looking for a new way to die

which is really just an old way to die

recycled.

There is a glory to waking up in the morning, and

the cadence of my yawns and

the stretch of my arms above my head is

at least as stirring as your

Saturday-night-stupored-swagger through mestizo streets at dawn.

Petrero and Gurrero and Valencia

wincing beneath your footsteps.

Because you

are not

Ginsberg and you

are not

Burroughs, and

the streets are much, much more beautiful

than your syringe

glittering

in their gutters.