Poems for Pretence
They say print is dead
Our poems are stuck to the left margin
A self-published hoax
A charm of unread blogs
Liberty means we set our own price
Freedom requires we write
In obscurity, floating words
That aren’t sustainable
The memory of poems
The pain of going unread
How much does Amazon take
Skim off the top, and publisher’s?
What does it take to print a book of poems?
Luck, an MFA, friends?
If I never see a book of poems
Crafted in my own heart
They say what you wrote
“Your poem” was enjoyed
By the writer, the guidelines of copyright
States it auto-deletes in a few weeks
For humanity cannot be allowed
To keep their soul
They offer us to submit our poem again
However the analytics proved
It was not original, not state-approved
The best the staff can do
Is read it, sincerely, the editor
Please understand that you won’t
Be able to write poems any longer
The audience has died, the young
People do not read text more than three lines.
Wuji Seshat 