This is, I believe, the most whacked poem I ever wrote.
So let me actually begin it with an epigraph from Plato's,
the Republic, book three, quoting from Socrates.
"Poets and storytellers are wrong about men
in the most important matters.
They declare that many men are happy though unjust."
You really have to think of the current administration.
"They declare that many men are happy,
though unjust and wretched, although just.
That injustice is profitable if not found out.
And justice good for others, but plain loss for oneself.
Such things we will forbid them to say."
So very early censorship.
As a colleague of mine reminded me recently,
Socrates was the first teacher to receive the death penalty
for poor student evaluations.
[LAUGHTER]
"Platonic."
"I was writing a poem in which the I in the poem
was writing a poem.
I wanted the poem the I in the poem
was writing to be one with which the I in the poem
would be happy.
So I thought that if I put in the poem a drug, which
would make the I in the poem, so long as he took the drug,
happy, it would likewise permit the I in the poem
to write by writing naturally a poem he and, by extension,
I would be happy with.
Naturally, I was wrong.
Naturally the I in the poem chose not to take the drug.
I'll figure it out for myself, he said to himself,
as naturally being I, he would.
Or else being I, he took the drug and didn't write the poem.
Or he took the drug and wrote the poem
and was happy with the poem until the drug, which,
although a drug in a poem was nonetheless a drug, wore off.
After which the I in the poem was
unhappy with the poem in the poem
because, although it was not a bad poem
and was written naturally while the I in the poem
was on the drug in the poem, which is by extension
this poem, the act of writing a poem in a poem
is well, unnatural.
Already, starved reader of this meager poem,
if you've read this far, you've probably
guessed where the poem's headed.
For in the poem the reader, albeit a late arrival,
is naturally I and thereby, the I in the poem.
And though you and I and the I in the poem all want to be
happy with the poem, we isn't.
For we see how starved, unnatural, and populous
its state.
Ergo, the poet is banned from the Republic."