battered by rhyme
I watched the
movie on poetry
start to finish
even though the end
was so predictable: camera
zooms in on the last
scrap of
paper poetry, the audience
mouthing the words
unbeknownst to them
the guinea pigs set
to decide
between two conclusions
loving the one
in which the scrap is
engraved in gold, sent
out into the
depths of space in
this if not
in the parallel dimension
hating the one
in which no aliens
read and
get a funny, warm, inner-
glowing feeling
but (less pretentiously) the
paper turns out to
lend itself into
being rolled into
neat cylindrical shape —
once loaded
with leaves dried if
not commercially toasted
words
going up in smoke, pain-
stakingly burnt