Let’s say, you were, oh I dunno, a dentist. (This makes me think of my favorite play by William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life, where for some inexplicable reason someone calls someone else a dentist). What are the odds, when you tell someone you’re a dentist, they would immediately answer with.

“Hey, d’ya make any money at that.”

Okay, now let’s see, oh, well, h’bout, oh, er, um you’re a poet. This makes me think of ... me! Now you tell someone you are, and what are the odds ...

The odds are very good.

“Poet. Hey, d’ya make any money at that.”

“Yes. I do. I make a lot of money at that. I make more in one hour as a poet than you will in an entire lifetime. D’ya understand me. I have my own plane. With “cutepoet” emblazoned in iconic script (typeface: California) on its sleek aerodynamic frame.”

“Really.”

“No. Not really.”

Now I have and do make money as a poet. I’ve sometimes been able to live whole stretches of time (yes weeks, weeks! lol) on my earnings as a poet (and on baloney sandwiches, that’s a metaphor, but you know what I mean, and you also know, if you read me at all, how I like to use metaphors that I don’t know anything about). I’ve traveled the word (world) as part of the Nuyorican Poets Café from New York, got paid, slept in good hotels, good hotels damnit, got per diem (just cash daily, here’s some cash, daily), I love per diem, etc. etc. blah blah blah.

Three of my best-known poems are featured in the best-selling poetry anthology Aloud (they’re best-known cuz they’re in the book) and they show up on university reading lists, and in scholarly papers, and even better, myspace pages. Among certain people if you say my name, they might drop the glass they’re holding. It’s been known to happen. (I’m somewhat infamous for the way I read poems, I once broke an arm while reading one). Some people might know the name, btw it’s Mike Tyler, hey everybod, without even knowing it’s me, that’s happened too. Y’can learn a lot ‘bout what people think ‘bout you when they’re talkin’ to you about you and they don’t know it’s you.

I’ve even had a stalker.

The readers of this blog haven’t known it’s me. And now they know that’s it’s me (apostrophe freak out), now they know that it’s me they’re not going to care. Who cares. “Know that it’s me?” What kindof language is that for a poet, actually for anyone. “D’ya know who I am?” No. We don’t.

That’s the way it should be. People that know me know I’m a poet. That’s different than saying people know I’m a poet so they know me. I am one, that’s all that really matters.

Y’know why poets don’t get paid?

It’s not a job.