After The Revolution

for and entirely inspired by Quincy Lehr
 
We will pay homeless people to follow
poet and critic Matthias Wetruder. And not just
into drug-stores, dry-cleaners, and taxi-cabs
(though there too) but also into Japanese restaurants
where said homeless person will sit
next table vociferously demanding,
as will be his or her right,
tomato ketchup with their sushi;
 
into seminars at first NYU,
then the University of Houston, on Uselessness
in The Work of Matthias Wetruder
where they’ll angrily ask questions about Matthias
that Matthias can’t answer; around
 
branches of Barnes & Noble wearing
a coat with a fungal infection
(and no belt) reciting from the latest
translation into Albanian of Sophocles;
 
into performances of Vespers for a New Dark Age
at the New York Metropolitan Opera
where they’ll sit behind Matthias making it clear,
by their very body odour,
they know what he’s…