From whom do you ask permission to write a poem?
What department clears the metaphor and simile?
Is there a group who approves any meanings that may accrue?
Is intention noted and focused will parsed?
Do logbooks exist that tally the sum of extended puns?
Are attenuated parallels constructed off-site in modular units?
What agency issues visas stamped, sealed, and official?
Is travel in imaginary realms regulated by mental immigration?
Do border guards keep separate each concrete correlative?
Are underpaid workers assembling flights of fancy in filthy factories?
Has poesy been outsourced? Are poetasters testing tainted tastes?
I’d like to apply to write a poem of myself but the Whitman Shops are closed,
Shut down by sequestration’s quarantine of spirit’s generosity.
We inhabit an age without a poet’s celebration or joy in life,
Swallowed by a feeding humpback corporate gulp of greed,
Reduced to literalism ignorant of fact, educated only away from erudition,
Designed for uses serving not the needy but the greedy.
Our poetry must fly now in plain containers limited in size,
Confiscated at the slightest hint of explosive potential.
Mercury’s shoes cannot be worn, tested metal sets off harsh alarm,
Our shuffling obedience betrays our silent inner shouts, our shrieks, our sighs.
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