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Is This Title Too Meta?


Let me tell you a tale of a land I once knew
A land which was almost entirely blue
A land which was not at all lacking heart
But where, in the end, things fell apart
In this blue land, there was too much disease
So an alchemist said, “I will cure all of these”
In his house of the spirits he mixed and he brewed
And all the while on mangoes he chewed
His concoctions bubbled and bubbled for years
While the blue people kept on weeping tears
“We want a cure now!” they begged at his door
So the alchemist came and said with a roar
“A new world we’ll have when I find the cure
One that is brave, without weeping to hear
So please stay patient, for I am working hard
And do, if you would, get out of my yard”
Longer and longer the alchemist worked
And over his house a black cloud of soot lurked
This darkness was rising up from his lab
And blocking the sky like an old hardened scab
“Our beloved country is no longer blue!”
Cried people as the lab continued to spew
But soon they were coughing and could barely speak
As the fumes spread and made them all dreadfully weak
They went to the alchemist and said with a sneeze
“We die more from your smoke than from any disease”
But he shut his door and replied with a pout
“As always with progress some will be left out”
A year passed and still he had not found a cure
While on the outside there was death far and near
The people gathered to decide what to do
And soon they agreed it was time for a coup
Someone was chosen, for she had a good conscience
(Though apparently not a good rhyme for conscience)
To go to the alchemist and fight to the death
For the right of all to breathe unsullied breath
The chosen set out on a terrible odyssey
Which regrettably rhymes only with geodesy
Through the land which was sadly no longer blue
To the house of the alchemist, covered in goo
She broke down his door and cried with wild eyes
“You’re not a healer, you’re a lord of the flies!
Since this is magical realism, she then cast a spell
And turned him with a flash into a seashell
Triumphant, she turned to look back at her land
And saw that everyone else had been killed by the pollution, so she committed suicide.

The end.


(Note: many of this poem's peculiarities can be explained by the fact that it was written
specifically to parody what I felt were the excessive guidelines of the assignment. In particular,
it contains no fewer than ten references to books from my school's literature curriculum.
I wonder how many you can find?)
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