The Difference a Century Can Make

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The Difference a Century Can Make
 
 
If Charles Baudelaire, if D. H. Lawrence,
if Antonin Artaud or Vincent van Gogh,
especially if Antonin Artaud or Vincent van Gogh
were alive today, they might be fat
like Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson;
knocked up by the Men in White
while ignored by the Men in Black,
—denizens of a postbourgeois world
where everyone's an entrepreneur proletariat,
an educated or uneducated workingclass
businessman who made the grade.
Have you made the grade?
 
If John Dee and Victor Frankenstein were alive today,
they'd be the Steve Jobs and John McAfee of tomorrowland,
the land of the lost made brilliant again in all our lightweight
contraptions we carry around, remembering—foreseeing—
impromptu game-changing.
 
The hipsters are on gluten-free diets
and the trolls are mostly fat,
mostly . . .
If Antonin Artaud or Vincent van Gogh
were alive today they might be fat
and no more hip than they ever were.