THE POLITICS OF SPRING

The Peoples Republic of Poetry was inspired during a short-lived love affair with a
dipoemat's beautiful daughter.

Delina, may your cheeks be trilliums and sanctioned by the Provincial Government of
Poetry. Where you touch me a wound bursts forth like a spring blossom. My body is a
filing cabinet of fanatic nerves. My eyes martyr themselves on your cheeks. My hands are
the heretics of distance. My arms are the legislation of love. You are the rose I am a
thorn on. I am a peasant in the dynasty of your eyes. You are a guest in my wilderness of
love. What if I wrote; "You and I, as simple as that, for what is more perfect than that
which is truly simple?”

It was a spring affair.

In spring the snow disperses like a mob of resentful rioters. In fields there are wounds in
the snow where grass bleeds green, where grass is an awakening eye. In spring the snow
goes a. w. o. l. In spring the sun leads a successful guerrilla movement or coup d'etat. In
spring there’s an insurrection of grass and love. All winter our flesh was ignorant of the
sedition of sunlight. No one ever votes spring into power. Is spring a totalitarian
imperialist? Are robins infiltrated foreign agents sabotaging snowmobile trails,
encouraging Green Power? Spring is a tolerant state because it permits equal
opportunity to all colours. Winter is a one-colour regime. Perhaps we all love spring
because it allows civil rights to the tulips, to the lilacs, to the exuberant blossoms with
wide-ons gluttoning sunshine and busy bees lathered in flower-cum. The sun is
prosecutor and executioner of snow. The sun casts an unanimous verdict and ignores all
appeals. April showers are the mourner's tears after winter has been hung from the
gallows of warmth. Summer is the sun's gift of appeasement for the questionable use of
coercive force to eliminate snow. (The government recessed to attend a coroner's inquest
involving the sunlight-poisoning of winter) Fall is a word that speaks for itself.

This was the state of the affair that became the affairs of state of mind in the imagine
nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry.

If a poet wore the premier of something, what might that something be? Would it be a
nation of obedient poetry lovers? Would the national militia consist of mighty tulips
armed with colour and sunshine? Would the national anthem be a long joyful sigh after
love? Would the Union of Pollen Producers go on strike demanding higher rates of
sunlight and more elaborate fringe benefits such as lighter showers and heavier dew?
Would this cause an imagine national crisis? Would the Creative Intelligence Anarchy
report that the Insect Pollen Transportation Organization had been infiltrated by
dissident outside agitators such as breezes? Would the Federal Bureau of Inspiration be
called in to conduct a thorough inspiration? Would the constitution enshrine the Prime
Policy of Poetry Proselytization and Proliferation? What would be foreign policy? Would
we accept only immigrants carrying passport dreams? Then what about the refugees
from Grief and defectors from Despair? Would we send out ambassadors to collect the
neglected? Would we establish dipoematic relations with Pain, negotiate for a ceasefire
and settle for shorter durations? Will we pick and chose our enemies at the drop of a
poem and come charging, singing the Battle Hymn of the Poetic?