Contact the author: popcultureslut@hotmail.com

Strangled not by hands of time
But by clichés;
Shrink-wrapped solutions suffocate
And stifle creativity.
Vicious circles drawn by those in charge
Lasso artists 'round the throat
And hurl them into early graves.

And what will you do-anything?-
To kill the old familiar,
Uproot it from its origins,
Deny it of authority?
Death-defying Dracula!
Rise up from your coffin
And suck the marrow from the bones
Of age-old structures.

Replace the perfect symmetry
Of cookie-cutter prescriptions
With opposites and antonyms;
Hold them up to funhouse mirrors,
Contort them beyond recognition,
And let the fountain of monotony
Dry up like a wrinkled prune.

Perforating holes in boxes
Thought to be hermetically sealed:
Resurrected not by miracles
But by the well of inspiration;
The old rules-just caskets with sails.
Let them sink into the fissure of history,
And leach the writings from the scrolls
Of age-old scriptures.

© 2007 Aaron Bayley