Every Fascist dictator knows
the key to fomenting a successful revolution
is to lock up all the poets
or, better yet,
permanently prune their impudent chorus.
Ask Vaclav Havel.
He'll tell you.
Prison just gives them time to write.
Poets persist and thrive on words alone.
Let a poet live
and she'll teach people to wonder,
plant the seeds of dissension,
and with the questions
uncurl the first tendrils of dissent,
multiplying like dandelions,
spoiling your garden
with buttery spots of passionate disorder.
Then it's work, work, work.
Weed. Weed. Weed.
Can you ever get them all?
Eventually the whole fecund, feral mass of yearning
encroaches on your carefully ordered plot.
The jungle takes you over,
turning the earth back to the people
while the poets swing effortlessly from tree to tree
playing Cheetah to Democracy.
First Published in The Stolen Island Review, 1997
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