Freedom From The Press
When the Book of the Month stopped
for lack of back payments,
I let the New Yorker expire.
I did not reorder my Life.
Time was running out.
My Woman's Home Companion
especially distressed me!
The Saturday Evening Post
gave up the ghost and I dropped
Good Housekeeping. Parents' Magazine
and Psychology Today
were filed away with my library card
in the garbage. Redder than Redbook,
I refused to ingest Readers Digest
or the National Review.
I fired the Daily Worker, too.
I never was in Vogue.
I did not renew Gourmet or Holiday.
I had no stomach for Christian Science Monitor,
Fortune, Popular Science OR the American Home.
If a Witness slid a Watchtower under my door,
I swore at the top of my old Village Voice.
Supplied out back with stacks of
Wall Street Journal, I canceled my toilet paper.
I did not go Ms or MAD.
Instead, I wrote poems to the Pentagon
which they filed under "Investigate."
I've learned to recite underground.
I've found a pen that writes under water.
It's a fight to the finish.
An official U-Naughty-States Censor
tried to disconnect my lights.
He pronounced me a Communist "Prevert,"
a Menace, hyper-conservative, an ANARCHIST.
He had me put away for life.
I've left my epitaph hidden in the graffiti
of a Hospital Staff washroom. It says:
"Freedom From the Press and Depression!"
It's not easy to die laughing these days
but better than dead serious.
Copyright 2007 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.
All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poet and may not be used without their permission.