The Poet's Indictment (Let he who is without cynicism...)
The State owns your heart now, Poet.
Always has.
We can't abide this epidemic
of women swooning...
Yet,
it seems
that even a poet
is entitled
to legal representation
these days.
A right, some say.
But should counsel storm off
in the midst of proceedings...
Well, that's not our responsibility.
Who could blame them,
what with all this talk
of unsavory women
and their
lesions?
It's criminal!
Your foul verse
even caused me,
a magistrate of the highest order,
to retch
with unprecedented vigor!
My objection
was sustained
for several minutes.
With no appeal...
"Your honor,
I suspect
culpability
rests
with the prosecution
for clinical and uninspired
recitation
of said verse."
Careful, Poet...
I'll cite you for disorderly meter.
Not
to mention
these
formatting
shenanigans,
which make sentencing
quite a challenge.
The State owns your heart now, Poet.
Evil festers in that tissue,
seeping out in these nefarious atrocities
you call "poems,"
fraudulent offenses to the very soul!
It's not enough to remove your heart.
We'll have to burn it.
Interpret that
as a metaphor,
and you'll find the irony
particularly bitter.
"I readily admit the Evil
in my heart
but maintain
that its ilk
must reside in the hearts of all
humans;
for without Evil,
there can be no..."
Objection! The defendant is resorting
to hackneyed cliché,
leading this court
into dark woods...
"...so tangled and rough
and savage that thinking of it now, I feel
the old fear stirring..."
Sustained.
This is a court of law.
I submit
that "death
is hardly more bitter."
Ref: "so tangled ... stirring" and "death is hardly more bitter" quoted from Dante's Inferno (Robert Pinsky translation).
