The Billionaire Poets

The following is a excerpted version of a poem commissioned by Poetic People Power that debuted in performance
on July 31st 2013 at the WILD PROJECT.  It is soon to be adapted into a story on an upcoming subscription based website dealing with social issues:

There are times I consider myself a wordsmith and nothing more.  Most of the times I take a stand, I am sitting –
in front of my computer on the coach in my boxers with a cup of carrot juice and some books –
writing up a storm.

I perform this poem as a dream for the wealthiest among us to hold the soul of a poet in their hearts.

I.

Inside the coffeehouse
that they own
the billionaire poets could easily write an ode
to the thousand dollar bill
using their thirty carat diamond Diamante pens,
with the eighteen karat gold nib
filled with the blood of emaciated artists
and unlawful investments.

Instead they fill stadiums
with the organic fruits of their labors,
tossing tomatoes back at hungry crowds
whose sobering cheers defuse the boos
catapulting cant-elopes to expand minds in states
that have yet to change their views.

Next, they attempt to straw-bury the blues
by cherry picking poems from recent news of bloodshed and injustice.
Skittle poems that taste the rainbow of reinCarnation.
Flower poems that shower sweatshops with sprinklers and paid vacations
pushing Daisies to clone Apple products on back order.
Poems that expose factories to roses, color outside lines
and remove all horticultural borders,
just so that after….wards these poets can donate their pages
to minimum wage wordsmiths underperforming for the quarter.

Then they celebrate,
by giving motivational speeches to fetuses,
by cashing reality checks
for any head-in-the-cloud bleeding heart elitists
who may never learn to fly,
and by offering up heaps of 3.14159 repeating
’til everyone gets a piece of the PI…