World Dream Bank: My Poetic License

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My Poetic License
or,
Chump Change
dreamed 2008/10/5 by Wayan

I stand in line (it's short, today)
at the State Department of Poetry
to renew my poetic license.
A tallish girl at the counter asks
"Who have you been reading, find
anyone good?" while typing my
application up. Not idle chat--she
lusts for new writers. For the SDP
hires thoughtful literate folk.
Does it surprise you? After all,
the staff can drive, at the DMV!
And this girl's sparse, sly repartee
hints she can really spin a simile.
Now it's time to pay, so I
open my mother's checkbook.
Out of work, sick and broke,
I had to ask my mom for a check
just to cover my license-fee.
Trusting, she handed me all.
But I worry--will the SDP
really accept my name
on her check? If not, well,
no freewheel metaphors for me--
they've upped the fines again.
And don't even think about
drunk rhyming, Li Po! No more
Comedy Doggerel School! Just jail,
then bureaucratic gobbledygook
for life, with no appeal.
Oh, great! My mother's book is all
out of blank checks. So I
must put off my renewal, crawl
back to my mom and beg.
I blush, ashamed to stand before
this cute and clever girl,
unable to pay my own way.
And it's a mere seven
thousand bucks!
Just chump change, today.

Digital sketch of a dream by Wayan: a line of poets renewing their poetic license at the State Department of Poetry.

NOTES

SDP: the real acronym in the dream was CPD--California Poetry Department--but "California" was too long for my lines.
Sick, broke, out of work: I am. Oh, I'm resourceful--artists have to know how to scrape by. But the dream warns I'm tired of the embarrassment, the vulnerability, the drain on my time. Poverty's become work; I'm ready to switch careers.
Renewal: more than just poetry. My life's hit the end of a wear cycle; I can't go on as I am. Ready to change--but the dream warns I still lack key resources.
Facing a bureaucrat: yesterday, for the World Dream Bank, I requested my first copyright permission from a corporation, not an individual (a Pulitzer Prize poet whose college, through its academic press, owns the rights to his very personal poems. Bizarre!) I've asked writers before, but never an institution. Eek!
Stiff new fees and drunk-poetry sentences the dream's mocking Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "tough-on-crime" talk here in California.
$7000: We're getting bids for solar panels on our co-op house. I suspect the dream means we'll need about $7000 down. In the current financial crunch we can't get a loan. Can we do it? [We did. $5000 down and tax rebates repaid most of it. Solar paid for itself in less than two years!]
Poetic license: license to exaggerate? I sure hope that's what it means! Cuz if it's literal, that's a steep fee!
This is Dreamverse #33. Every day, a dream-poem! Well, take that with poetic license! My dreams are tweaking me for literary hubris. And yet they also hand me a comic vignette perfect for a Dreamverse...

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