Poets are not pretty

Poets are not pretty.
Mariah Carey is very pretty but
she certainly is not a poet.
This is a good example but all of us who read Scientific American know that an example doesn’t count as proof. I have never read the cover of Scientific American but Mariah Carey
is pretty and certainly not a poet.
Maybe this is not enough to convince you that poets aren’t pretty. Bob Dylan
is in the D section of the Pop/Rock shelves at Virgin Megastore on Union Square featuring The Ten Dollar Sale: Hundreds of CDs and DVDs All for Only Ten Dollars open until One A.M. and Midnight on Sundays, closed early on holidays. If Jon—J-O-N without an H—is the manager on the floor then Bob Dylan will be in the D section of Pop/Rock at Virgin Megastore at Union Square, which is alphabetically required to be next to Mariah Carey. A, B, Carey, Dylan. They are so close that it is easy to compare the prettiness of Mariah and Bob. If John is off, then Jess might be working and the Bob Dylan stuff will be in Country/Western TV Shows on the lower level and Jess will not understand that Mariah Carey is not related to John Kerry bless his liberal heart for trying to beat George Ugly Bush. But just because he is ugly does not make him a poet either. Though
it helps.
It helped Bob Dylan. He is ugly so it is better to listen to him then to fantasize about frolicking naked with him in the forest behind the abandon barn where no one will pass judgment. But, Mariah Carey is pretty so it’s better to listen to Bob Dylan while frolicking naked with Mariah Carey in the forest behind the abandon barn.
I think about Mariah Carey and frolicking when I look at her poster in my friend’s computer room. Walt Whitman’s grayscale portrait is in every English teacher’s room or their office. But we should not hang pictures up of Walt Whitman. He reminds me of a homeless polar bear when I see his washed-out image like 43-dollar Gap jeans next to the Historical Timeline of Shakespeare’s Comedies and Tragedies beginning with The Comedy of Errors and wrapping up with The Tempest. They say that Shakespeare didn’t even write these plays that it was a prince who had Shakespeare pretend to be the author and that is probably true because Shakespeare is not that bad to look at. I would not frolic naked behind the abandon barn with William Shakespeare but placed next to a photograph of an old, straw broom with a black stiff hat that the English teacher who bought the frames for each of these tells everyone on the first day of class is the most important American poet in, in America, I always rather look at Shakespeare. The English teacher should wallpaper the room with the 416 pages of Leaves Of Grass. It is more important to have “Song of Myself” especially visible on the wall than a picture of Walt Whitman and his hat. Poets are not pretty.
If you are pretty and you want to be a poet
too bad. You can't
because poets are not pretty.
At the Green Market grocery and deli on Fourth Avenue and 10th street, the clerk—he is pretty, too, but not a poet
of course—will stare at you a lot but not because you are a poet. You are not a poet; you are pretty. But, if you put the bag that he gives you on your head you will be a poet
finally.
But cut holes so you can see if anyone is noticing you as a poet
now. Cut the holes pretty small. If they can see your big, shiny eyeballs you will not be a poet again because
poets are not pretty.