untitled
by marcus bales

I
"let me have men about me that are fat;
sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;"
so says the bard, without a caveat --
and most of us have found that of all rights
in phrase the bard got right, it’s this one that
above the rest I think most expedites
the thought that public safety and mutual need
will better serve mankind than being freed.

II
"yond’ rumpole has" (i dare interpolate!)
a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much:
such men are …" well, you know the rest --vertebrate,
perhaps, though staggering with the crutch
of abstract thought away from fat and fate
and toward the plane they always try to clutch:
"free speech" – at whose unfettered feet they fall
while howling this right’s right beyond them all.

III
since every poet needs to choose a muse,
and every muse is said to hope for choosing,
"free speech" will be the happy muse I choose.
across the intellectual landscape, cruising
altitudes which other rights don’t use,
we’ll overfly mere reason as confusing,
and leave our contrails sweeping through the sky
like groundless arguments which don’t apply.

IV
ah! sweet amusing muse, you headlong thing!
you swoop and soar and never seem to land
or even be connected while you fling
your eager self through footless air in grand
magnificence seductively, and sing
your temptress song of – what? what’s your demand?
i’ve heard your song of what a good man gains
who frees a noun or adjective from chains!

V
oh, yes! bomb down the civil walls and crow
that only those who dare to fight may speak –-
explode the gates and lay the towers low
which safely kept alike the strong and weak
from flames and personal attack – and oh,
let’s not forget to form a haughty clique
from which we can exclude those who can’t cuss
as vilely and as violently as us!

VI
fly – and rain destruction down in showers:
bomb alike the wealthy and the waif.
bomb down, I say, the civil walls and towers!
strafe property and privacy, and strafe
above all else all public safety powers
which might propose to make the public safe!
for if you’re high enough to flee the blame
a ruin and a city look the same.

about this poem:

this was written by marcus bales, a former sysop for time's pathfinder bulletin boards. i had to have it.