Here's a poem that comments on the consternation some feel as they are cornered by epistemic terrorists demanding that language work the way they require it. "Why can't the world be the way I want it," they whine.
Thankfully, very few texts operate as stereo-instructions—this is a message that must get out to the public before we kill each other with our inerrant texts. The following poem is a tribute to and a reminder of the freedom that language promises.
Merry Solstice
Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry,
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
