First amendment

I must confess it's hard

writing poetry when all the decent words have been used up

and the indecent ones are disabled for your own safety

all the feelings have been expressed and everything you like or detest

has already been filmed in three jolly dee.

I need a new experience but when I phoned they said

all the best . . . booked up . . . next ten years

. . . owing to . . . potential vat increase and

social service cuts . . . finance a new Iranian war.

It was a really bad line of course.

Perhaps then the best course

may be to steer backwards down the literary high seas

criticise someone's already famous rhymes and submit

an essay to a poetry blog but quick

before it goes offline in the virtual war.

Oh gracious oh goddes shall I seek inspiration

in your solid gold X-Box, your four thousand pound sandal?

Is your antique Aston Martin designed to make me scream

or cry in my local pint?

Or shall I purchase my poems cheap now they're past

their sell buy date and moulding your fair trade brie?

I must admit it's a bit of a squeeze

coming up with words that ease your dainty conscience

when all the art's been sterilised, boxed up

commercialised and supersized, disenfranchised, sold out

advertised, materialised and left to die left

to dry out the sun dried vine dried reader.

Here's a teaser dear editor

dear dealer in syllables, investor in riddles

collector of puzzles and giggles oh man in the middle.

Here's your horoscope and here's straight dope to give you

proverbial hope or better rope. It's not the kids you're protecting

but their parents whose dreams of connecting with them

you deny with your censorship, your rubber stamped sadistic

whip your tired tongues and limpid lips, those you claim

to represent. Don't stake your claim in my email box please

don't let my name be mingled with your dinosaur disease.

Don't fly your flag or try to guess what's in my bag man

don't tell me your aim is art which is liberty and please

don't try with your platitudes, your saintly attitudes

to let me sell my soul for some place in your nice clean hole

the stinking grave of your torpid ghost.

Copyright © 2012 J A Lee