Propheteering

There’s little profit to the prophet

in the proffering of prophecy.

They’re either put in institutions

for the schizophrenic or arrested

for seditious libel or for rousing

to carousal any rabble-rouser

likely to espouse the zillion things

that go against the status quo.

Whatever prophecy they prophesy

they frequently don’t live to see

come true or not come true. Mightily

disliked if it construes a future doom –

unheeded, disbelieved if it foretells

an idiotically unlikely boon, all

in all, a prophet’s propheteering

is a thankless task. It’s no surprise

so many in my own acquaintance

I’ve found foundering at night along

dark piers and wharves in masks,

chugging devil-water out of flasks –

rather as I’ve done and surely more

than once again will do, when yet

another urgent revelation comes,

and drums into me the directive: 

spew.

.