Robert Stratford

The postmodern poetry corporation blues

I wrote a poem
I wrote a poem.

 

It challenged
the smiles at the cafe

 

and they understood something
of what meaning
there may have been.

 

Then she came ...
dressed in shiny black.

 

She bought my poem
for twelve hundred bucks and

 

I bought some food,
some new tyres for my bike.

 

But those corporate bastards
those corporate bastards

 

sold that poem’s central image
to a Bulgarian love sonnet,

 

they took out its political
commentary

 

and added a much more
ironic ending.

 

A lot more people liked it.
A lot more people liked it.