Communist Express Avenues Of Poetical Attitudes Poem by Erhard Hans Josef Lang

In an arch communist country's slimmer camps
you'll find youth of different levels of obesity
crammed up together, all being there to
slim down so as to meet different figures of body weight:
One is in for making up into a weasel-like policeman ever quick,
and needs to speck down a bit,
another's boss wouldn't like his bakery apprentice be too fat,
since he might eat away in the very instance
too much of what's being baked at a time.

Now let us suppose that in that very same
country of common ultimate order of weight,
next to the slimmer camps,
there were also poets polishing camps
crowding up with the spirits of
highflying youthful beautiful mind essence
with different figures and faces.

Now, versus the scenery in the slimmer camps,
here to make out who's who,
in this projected state-of-art poetry smith'ry,
we'd have to look beyond the adepts' bellies.
There we'll have to question them, one after the other:

'What poems - yours? '
'Is there an underlying purport of why
you would want the world to get to your story,
so neatly wrapped up? '
'You want to shock the world. - right,
a good teacher does have to arouse her student,
even rash sometimes, when fallen asleep.
'Or you might be strictly after
releasing yourself from a shocked state of mind,
and the publications are mere
by-products of your attempted self-healings? ' -

'So, you write poems about broken love relations.
It hadn't happened better to yourself in life? -
- Oh, I see, you're just thankful it never did happen,
and you're so happy about it that you need to say it
in glorious poems, to catch the real feel of it! '

'I want to help our world's young generation to avoid
making the mistakes we have made when
we were young and dumb, and I think I can
convey my message best when presented in entertaining
exaggerated sample stories that
deal with the various problems at hand.'

'I am so confused by this overwhelming life
we're so heavenly invited in to lead,
on this overpowering earth.
I need to push off heavy loads from my soul.
I will become a good poet, and
write it all down, whatever oppresses my heart,
write it down on a golden paper, go to a remote river-side,
form steadfast dainty tiny boatlets out of thick big green leafs,
and, vowing then to be freeing myself
for my envisioned destination in life,
I'll set my mental compositions, thus, afloat.
For perusing some strictly personal contents of
my poetical mind I wouldn't require any of
readers to do so through the human eye,
even though I, as a human, couldn't see and
present those other than through the biased senses,
but I feel that the higher spirits of nature,
close to God evermore, glancing through
the wuthering shades between the trees
along the river-path of those well-destined
pieces of poetry of mine
will not fail to receive my messages.' -

'I want to give something to the world by writing poems.
Poetry says it best!
But what exactly it is that I'll be giving - I couldn't say yet.
I'm still in the making myself, you see.'

* * * *

Supposed I were the one conducting the
interviews with these common adepts in poetry,
there in the communists poets polishing camp,
given all these smart answers by them,
I could but only ask them:
'But why then are you all here in this camp?
By your answers, you all seem to
know very well by yourselves,
without further camp instructions,
what courses you're set on,
each of you as creative humans and as poets likewise! '

And listen, listen! .... what these communists could answer back:
'But haven't you noticed, there in the outside,
that we're all living in a commonplace world,
and that everyone is camping up with others.
So why wouldn't we, the poets, too, camp up as one! ? '

* * * *

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