Poet to be held inprisoned
All free birds attract gold cages
And the act of living hides in cells
Ovid was banished – as was Pablo Neruda
…
Siberia for Anna Ahkamatova
Solneschitenzyne to the Gulag Peninsula
Rimbaud, Verlaine, Celine, William Wantling
Hubert Huncke – convicted drug peddler
Even Ginsberg behind bars for a time
All those political poets of action
Whose living poetry kept them inprisoned
Singing like Palestinians or South Africans
Ululating like Algerians, writing like every emigre’
Or dissident – whose gypsy lives violate olde laws
When what is needed is to change
All non-violent, victimless crimes allowed
No more the rightwing reactionary Puritanism
That outlaws dancing, sex and drugs
More a world of poets – extending line by line by line
Outside AND inside prison cells – watching, waiting, witnessing
As the new world is reborn – in every line of every poem ever written
And every poet alive – inside or outside this world’s too many prisons…
COPYRIGHT © 2005 THOM THE WORLD POET
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