IV: Dystopia#
First - The Haystruck Head
In a distant future, where rhyming is a crime,
Each metered sentence sentenced an irony of kinds,
To be what is to be condemned,
No finer end on offer.
And so our plaintiff finds himself, facing legal tempers,
“Please explain these zippered little slippers?
What treason to dress
In these flat black slacks
Upon your thighs which lie?”
In his defense, “No finer mind could scarce divine
An outfit stitched in nothing, where words find lines,
Despite my time, where threadbare seams
Sewn inlaid dreams, in threads of no design!”
With a guffaw, a lawyer stands with a score of schooling,
Slams his hands in mock remand, and argued such while drooling,
“So you admit to this wit
With which your garb comports?
Such deviance detailed in resounding writ,
Seals itself in short retort.”
The court strikes twelve, the twelve struck dead,
They find in haystruck head a verdict over-muted,
Which lolls and gags in city courtyards putrid,
Teeth click-clacking like stark didacts
Preaching to the bricks and blackness.
Second - Poets Et Al
The last ones were hunted in places they waxed poetic
Across windswept fields, of forest clearings, in gardens copacetic,
Yet for all of it, the tresses dressed in such lovely roses picked.
The final rhyming couplets vied with the hounds bark brayed
Encircled in arms, they died swift in circled stage:
First went the Romantics, and love was lost.
Then went the Stoics, and naught was crossed.
Then went the Classics, but no one missed them.
Next were the Playwrights and Poets Et Al,
Any one fool who answered the call.
Twelve nights they burned, twelve nights we wept,
And then dreamless dreaming through the future we slept,
Awoke and found a sudden desire expired,
No more urge to imbue,
To scatter and subdue,
That which words clearly defy, the rhyming rhythm
In which life resides.
Constitutions were written to codify:
Kill all the poets, let poetry die.
Return it again
The rooted treasure they had looted.
Third - Ignore the Metaphor
Watch as child to child between each haloo
Hear the scattered echoes retreat and ensue.
In this land of rhymeless ribbons, rhythm still is found.
In the hamlets of branded outlaws each system such begets,
Observe in silent moments poetry’s fiery signets:
(Awake, flowers, tower higher every hour.
Find, sentence, a sense of unending suspense.
Sleep, children, with dreams of subtle schemes.
Revel, rhymes, you are more than merely vessels.)
How to ignore the metaphor
And resist the urge to write?
A deadly sin
But without skin,
What games can we be had?
February 2025