'Freedom Is Everything 11/11/09 Poem by Margaret Alice

My Department revels in schemes diabolical
thank you letters for doing my job, average
performance relaying boring papers in heathen
script, assembly line production of Victorian
English renditions of words killed in action
without accomplishing anything

Not conveying theories uplifting or useful
ideas, ashes of being average-doing-nothing
desperately in my mouth, I sit in my chair
revel in ideas I work in heaven, given my
colleagues suffer me in their carefully
constructed heaven of total control,

They should have kicked me out ages ago
as being unteachable, it goes to show that
the supernatural is operative in my life,
magic powers are active on my behalf to
make space for me in sensory reality
where I don’t belong

I need to nail my consciousness to the ground
stay away from my dreams and vision’s natural
habitat to live within routine’s subjectively based
beliefs; I accepted this hateful letter congratulating
me as a brain-dead human being with
a dead-pan face,

I cannot revel in success of creating an imitation
and totally colourless, catatonic, word-destroying
human being; the letter is an insult which still preserves
my role in charades that allow me escape by
motivating me to fight against the chains and
manacles that chafe every day

I cannot give in and become a good official,
however much I crave accolades, cannot
sell my soul: No, wait – I gave my soul away
eons ago when I decided that
freedom is everything…