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?)