A Poet’s License
A Poet’s License
The poet is the only licensed arsonist
permitted to set fire to the furniture of the gods
and call it interior decorating.
We may say anything. Anything.
The president is a traitor.
The emperor’s new clothes are on back order.
Your founding father was a pompous little prick
with a powdered wig and a serious constipation problem.
Put it in prose and they call it libel.
Put it in verse and suddenly you’re a national treasure.
Such is the magic of metaphor,
that silk-lined getaway car for the criminally articulate.
We take the great and good,
those self-inflated blimps of sanctimony,
and give them the pinprick of a well-placed adjective.
Pop.
There goes the pedestal.
There goes the marble.
There goes the solemn little statue
of a soul who mistook applause for immortality.
Irreverence is not a lack of respect.
It is respect refusing to kneel
before an overdecorated idiot.
And if the truth must wear a flower in its lapel
to get past the doorman,
then hand me the fucking boutonnière.
I have a poem to write
and several monuments
in desperate need of a punchline.
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‘This bit of poetic irreverence is brought to you by… reminded me of Sesame Street, Chris, but I’m sure they weren’t quite so irreverent. I enjoyed every stanza, especially:
ReplyDelete‘Such is the magic of metaphor,
that silk-lined getaway car for the criminally articulate’
and
‘We take the great and good,
those self-inflated blimps of sanctimony,
and give them the pinprick of a well-placed adjective.’
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ReplyDeleteLove the way we are alloved to work the metaphor... There is a freedom in being a poet.
Being a poet is so liberating, isn't it! But poets have been incarcerated! I love your irreverent write, Chris!
ReplyDeleteFukkin A, Chris. I'd like to see this on a ticker tape machine on repeat in Times Square.
ReplyDelete