The Notepad Men

It's cold today, the wind has China on its breath,
Shards of a thousand years of culture,
Wrecked by the crossing of the border,

This country will not scan for poets,
Like me, the proscribed and unapproved,
Its name rolls out and jolts us all,

The DPRK is formed from blanks,
The dreams of nana's nursery thugs,
Crushing the trash they pass off as toys,

He's a flat, grey man with flat, grey minders,
The dead eyed Notepad Men of Juche,
Fearful of hunger and re-education.

The paper is un-lined, non-aligned,
Government Issue stationery,
Locally produced for fear of empty space,

That would import a dangerous idea,
A whole white page to fill with freedom,
A page to let you think and be.

He talks, they walk and note verbatim,
Policy and doctrine, rocket drill,
Fisheries protection, isolationist redress,

The poetry of those considered artists,
Taken down in quadruplicate or more,
The white sails of charisma.

At night the Dear Leader wakes alone,
Calling for these men to note ideas,
The border smashed with ideology,

But in the low-rise bunkers to the south,
Autonomous machines and men are blinking,
It's fissile here and futile to imagine victory.