BLAND LAND BLASTS POETRY

Click on image to enlarge

Late last night, Poet Jim Johnstone, was arrested at a poetry reading on charges of conspiracy to commit chemical catastrophe.

Mundane Intelligence 5 arrested Poet Johnstone on an outstanding warrant issued by the Banality Boner Bureaucrazy of Bland Land. The whereabouts of his detention remain a matter of speculative fiction at this time.

In a Declaration of Dreck & Droll issued this morning by the Prosaic Parliament of Bland Land, Poet Johnstone has been charged with “conspiracy to smuggle and distribute chemicals with the purpose of disabling the production of mediocrity."

“The aggressively expansionary policies of the United Imagine Nations must halt. The Imagine Nations are constantly overthrowing the peaceful complacency of the established order with new ideas, new concepts, new precepts, new thisism and neo thatism. Give it a post-retro rest!” declared the Dreck & Droll Declaration.

“We have arrested development of any further sub-verse cursive activity from the Peoples Republic of Poetry, a particularly odious state of mind renown to infect the deepest recesses of human sensibility, inspiring people to rebel against the “status quota.” Poets are always defaming mediocrity, preventing it from entering their precious anthologies and literary journals. They are a Discrimi Nation. This blatant blandophobia must stop.”

Poet Johnstone, second place winner of the 2008 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s annual literary awards, was reading material from his recent book, The Velocity of Escape, at Yawning Heights, an austere cafeteria in the community centre of Mediocrity Mall when agents from MI5 took him into custody.

MI5 rubber-stamped Poet Johnstone, releasing a greyscale mugshot displaying a piece of ‘compromising evidence’ which appears to be the formula for the velocity of escape written on a napkin that had been “secreted inside the empty barrel of a ballpoint pen” in Poet Johnstone’s lab jacket.

The Poemland Security Department of the Peoples Republic of Poetry immediately issued a purple prose alert to the poetariet, advising of the current danger of travel into the vast arid flatlines of Bland Land.

Poet Edward Nixon, raconteur and host of the Livewords poetry reading series said, “I’ ve collaborated with Poet Johnstone many times in recent years. The charge reeks of set-up. It is stanza operating procedure for Poet Johnstone to have a few nerdy behavioural manifestations. After all, he molests intestinal tracts like a sushi salad in pursuit of his educational ambitions.”

“The Bland Glands have bloated themselves to an explosive extreme.” declared Poet Wally Keeler at a hastily called impress conference. “Their Banality Boners need to stanza down and release Poet Johnstone immediately! There is no need to take their current crisis out on Poetry.”

Poet Keeler was referring to the outbreak of writer’s blockade that has spread through all genres of Bland Land in recent months. This unique drought of mediocrity was especially pernicious in the pulp friction industry, with the closing of several publishers of romance yarns, grocery store tabloids and other sources of crap.

Poet Lionel Kearns reported last week that the vast Clone & Cliché recycling industry had been experiencing a precipitous drop in supplies and was “unable to meet the heavy demand of the bored and brainless.”

Poet Joe Rosenblatt threatened to swarm Bland Land with delirious dithyrambs of business bees. “There are billions of them all over, ready to serve Poetry at the drop of a grain of pollen. Their business is the promiscuous distribution of fertility, and god knows, Bland Land is in need of that.”

Poet Keeler added, “The social sedation of The Bland with a balanced and regular supply of medicinal mediocrity appears to be breaking down in our troublesome neighbour, Stag Nation.”
Poet Keeler continued,“The insufferable boredom caused by chronic reprints, reruns & recycling is causing textonic shifts in the flatline of their general somnambulence. Totalitarian torpor is losing its power. They’ve no creative class providing fresh ideas. They’re fucked.”

A dimmed wit who works for the Band of Bland Glands said Poet Johnstone is accused of leading a team of Pharmaceutical Performance Poets and post-retro deconstructivistas to develop an antithesis-elixer to Write Away, the renown decongestant of writer’s blockade. Poet Johnstone was a member of the team developing the decongestant. The warrant application accused Poet Johnstone of acting in concert with other emerging poets and polluting the River of Rhyme with this antithesis-elixer. The river flows through Limerick Land into Bland Land.

Technical documents released by MI5 assert that the filtration devices installed up stream to retain the most nutritious rhymes from the river had been:

(1) tampered by the installation of typewriter ribbons from Poet Joe Rosenblatt’s early typewriters and that the said ribbons had been

(2) dipped into the nectar of fragrant yellow flowers plucked from the Quinte Hotel poems of Poet Al Purdy and

(3) infected with the in verse ingredients of Write Away

(4) with the purpose of congesting the output of mediocrity from The Bland who rely on the River of Rhyme as a supplementary nutrient to their generally impoverished diet.

The Peoples Republic of Poetry has denied any program exists to contaminate Bland Land with the purpose of shutting down mediocrity. “We are fed up with their scurrilous blanders against Poetry. In an ideal world mediocrity would not exist. Our policy is one of Mutual Cold Exist Stance” declared the Minister With Poetfolio.

The Peoples Republic of Poetry is preparing to review the viability of its outreach programs. The ten-year outreach program sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Inspiration of the Peoples Republic of Poetry is expiring later this year.

The outreach programs of the PRP are meant to attract and identify those with underdeveloped bland glands and to offer them assistance to immigrate to the United Imagine Nation of their choice.

Last spring, the PRP announced the fast-tracking of refugees from Grief and defectors from Despair to become full members of the Creative Class. This provoked a brief dipoematic spat with Bland Land at the time, but nothing more came of it.

“We are cognizant that emerging poets sometimes supplement their income with the export of doggeral to the existing glut in Bland Land. The importation of mediocrity into the Peoples Republic of Poetry is restricted for research purposes and exploitation by collagistas. The trade imbalance with Bland Land will continue,” declared the 366th Interim Report of the Commission On the Causes & Manifestations of Divergent Think Procedure Concerning Dipoematic Relations With The Menace of Mediocrity.