THE LAST AUTOMAT Poems by Lou Orfanella The Last Automat • Composite Sketch • Charcoal Drawings in the Park • The Burning Leaves • You Were Not Born • Five-and-Dime • Relative Humidity • Bodies of Water • Liberal Education: The Humanities • Mercury Girl • Weathered Paint • Resulting From a Chance Meeting Between William Carlos Williams and Richard Brautigan • Parking Spaces • October Song • Scorecards on a Wednesday Afternoon • Liberal Education: The Sciences • The Excavation of Highway 13 • Coffeehouse Nights • Walking in the World • Altar Girl • The Magic Pocket Watch • Looking at Girls Looking at Art • The Lingerie Department • Twisting Unicorns • When the Present Meets the Past • Where Have You Gone, Huntz Hall? • The Intellectual Scam • Running For Trains • Times Square • Waiting For Ralph $9.00 US • 48 pages Copyright © 2001 Argonne House Press. ISBN 1-88761-48-3

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The Intellectual Scam

You go to Bergman movies at overpriced theaters and tell your friends the next day how they just must go at the first opportunity
They agree with you and have heard how it is his deepest film to date
And, oh you add, that new Woody Allen film he is at the height of his artistic genius

You never miss Masterpiece Theater and buy classical CDs by dead composers whose names you mispronounce
You wander through art galleries during lunch behind your designer sunglasses
And sip expensive coffee from paper cups with cardboard sheaths to keep from burning your hand

You know where-it’s-at and what-it-is

The painters, the composers, the poets, the directors, and all the rest
Plant no hidden meanings and roads to the truth
No philosophical messages
Though you are sure you have found them at the wine and cheese receptions where you impress your friends

The artists know it damn well and laugh like hell