Inauguration Annhiliation

Lady Gaga brought me to tears, which is not such a hard thing to do as I am wanton, in moments of peril, to grave-giving patriotism.

Somewhere in the triumphalism Justin Timberlake reminded me that we (white men) have at least one example of a talented singer/dancer.

Woody Guthrie, abused but not spiritless, apparently survives in the nasal breach of Jennifer Lopez.

And a youth poet laureate said things tailor-made for high praise. 

As the poet spoke—I thought she was fourteen—I wondered aloud who the actual, real, for realz National Poet Laurette might be and if that person should be feeling somewhat invisible considering they’d been displaced by Poet du youth du Jour. 

I continued, concerned, that it would be sad if you’d spent your whole life a poet only to be forgotten at the very moment of a Poet’s greatest, and only, opportunity for a national audience, the Presidential Inauguration.

Subsequently I learned that the reigning National Poet, Monarch of American Poets, is non other than my old nemesis, Joy Harjo. 

Harjo is a person I took a class from in 1988.

She, pablum personified. I, Bukowski encrypted.

She did not like me. And gave me a B.

In poetry.

I got a B. A fucking B. In poetry.

I wonder that she had not the courage to have dropped a C on me, or maybe a D. 

If she’d been a real poet, she’d surely have given me an F.

But a B? What is that? It’s not failure. It’s not dismissal or disgust. I mean, she thought about that B. A B? In poetry? To be fair she hated me from the moment we met.

And she has haunted me for three decades.

As I told my son, National Poet Joy Harjo is my Thanos—my desiccant. My shriveler.

Worse, she is my Thanatos, Greek God who takes you down, to the down down.

But tonight, the bright night of the New Dawn, the Awakening (yes?) The vaunted National Poet, Trump’s National Poet, Joy Harjo, previously teacher to Chris Dudley, welp, that poet died upon her own pen.

Self inflicted, as those who saw through her might say. Hoisted upon her own petard, she was.

If I had a piano I’d bang it until my fingers began to bleed a bit just to celebrate.

Oh, fuck it, where’s my piano? Tonight’s for celebrating.