For Kurt Cobain, poet, songwriter, social critic, who was born this day in 1967. Some musings about the superficial world he saw, and ultimately despaired of.

It is artful, but is it art?
Does it touch the soul and stir the heart?
Does it evoke a yearning for what’s real,
Or is it merely clever artifice
Without feeling or sense?

Such nonsense clogs the airways
Of our collective consciousness.
Our radios whine with doggerel
That sniffs the shores, but fails to find
A continent of meaning or intent.

Visuals and images set our retinas reeling,
And as they fade pale ghosts appear
And gesture, discontent, inarticulate,
Pointing to some vague and indefinable reality
We once knew and can no longer see.

Our sense is trivialized
As we embrace what is endlessly facile.
“Here we are, now entertain us,”
We demand. Then kill the poet
With his own hand.