Ezra Pound famously said that “poetry is news that stays news.” While we don’t know about that, the news can have a certain poetry to it. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on one of the curious headlines, cartoons, and other journalistic tidbits featured at Yesterday’s Print, where old new stays amusing, curious, and sometimes downright confusing.
Escaped parrot causes riot, it takes 80 men to Quell.
He watched out of his cage,
For days,
Hours,
Seconds,
For the perfect moment,
To snap the latch off and run wild and free,
That he did,
The perfect night arrived,
The night before,
He didn’t make one sound not even a squawk,
And as he ran he realised he had wings,
He forgot how to use them,
It had been so long locked up,
Inside the cage,
Long strong beautiful feathers, dusty, dark,
Underneath tropical yellows and reds
Suppressed from his dim lit living,
He ran and as he was about to leave the building,
He saw 80 men,
Standing outside waiting to start a days work in the factory,
He went over to them and shouted,
“Freedom for birds freedom for birds”
And the men began to chant along,
following him,
And as the parrot got deeper into the outside world,
Rain fell on his feathers for the first time since being small,
And his tropical colours collided and reflected all around him and the 80 men.
@Lilyth Poetry 
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