The Tone Is the Message Is the Tone

The following is a poem I wrote in 2010.  It resulted from real criticism (quotes in italics) received.  Let it stand as an example of From the Dross, I Create, a chapbook I compiled and published a year ago.  

The Tone Is the Message Is the Tone

I like what you’re saying but

you’ve got the wrong tone,

wrote an editor, then

another and another and another.

Grab a flap of flab from the belly literati,

twist and tug, twist and pull, 

bring forth hesitant, repressed indignation.

If you want to increase your congregation,

replied yet another… tin soldier 

of the vast ocean army of invincibility,

you’ve got to smoothen out 

the wrinkles in your voice.

Speak rude truth, and rage, rage 

through the dying light of the establishment,

and educe ineluctably 

the buried anger of crushed individuality.

I’d like to publish some of your work, 

wrote another tin man, though

disguised in mask of freethinker. 

You make some very interesting points, 

but I don’t think our niche of readers 

would appreciate your peculiar bluntness.

With the ax, fall revenues,

with the sword, tumble advertising dollars,

with the shotgun, shrink subscribers,

with the right tone, wane truth and justice,

with the pen of thin skin, butchery behind charade.

I’d like to see more of you in our publication,

wrote another editor,

but your discourse needs to be more civil.

It even makes me feel a bit uncomfortable,

so I could imagine our audience might also feel that way.

Kill the voice and the word be sameness

Kill the discrepancy and business be usual

Kill the messenger and the message be no longer

I think what you need is to add a little humor,

wrote a friend, 

to get more people on your bandwagon, then

you could turn the blade on your laughing readers.

Ever humorless, though, and angry, raucous and uncivil,

fed with the fodder of consistency on how to build a constituency, 

I still choose the coffin of anonymity…