The Bards that Moaned

'Take out the garbage yourself', said the poets.
'Pick up the children on your way back,
And stop asking me to do the dishes.
Make love I can, if need be --

But my domestic obligations end there.
I'm a poet first and a poet last.
All the time in the world need I to
Polish my rhymes, sharpen my metaphors,
Revise the metre, and alliterate.
What can you know of the joy of composition?
The rapture, the tears of cathartic fulfillment,
The comprehensive car-wash of the soul.
But do you realize how colon-clenching and
Time-consuming it is? Leave me alone.
If I were to die tomorrow, you would
Bury me with a poem in my chest

That never got to know the light of day
Or the scent of paper.'
Ergo, the wealthy man kidnapped them all
And put them in a spaceship.
'Now, ladies and gentlemen, you haven't
Anything to complain about', he smiled wide.
'All the privacy you please, and all of time
Lie sprawled at your feet. We shall fly to
Triton and back; that gives us nineteen years.
Slip a cushion beneath your bottom,
Get all that verse out of your bosom.
I hereby bequeath you the paradise
You sought and ached everyday for.'
Within the first year,
The poets killed themselves.
They had nobody to read them.