Over growing concerns regarding the increased space in the monarch's cuticles, the state-backed newspaper releases a forty-five-part directive for aspiring writers and or poets on how to write apolitical regime-appeasing poems.

 

How to Write a Poem That is Not Political?

 

Follow this guide down to the last detail to yield the highest probability to kickstart your literary career journey, with the Empereur ’s blessings. ‘Vive l’Empereur!

 

Directive 1: Aspiring poets must advocate for more austerity measures.

 

Directive  2: Writers and poets chosen by the regime will be required to advocate for getting rid of every cashless venue.

 

Directive  3: Aspiring poets must use war language at all times to describe their writing.

 

Directive  4: Profanity in poems is only valid when used rhetorically against women and minorities.

 

Directive 5: When writing about airport departures, the cabinet in a recently passed referendum has voted that aspiring poets can only mention moving away from someone they love and, hereby, cannot make comparisons to how it feels the same in grief.

 

Directive  6: Up-and-coming writers are to champion xenophobia and nurture hateful feelings towards the writers of the past who do not support the regime’s exclusionary gender doctrines all the while serving a transvestite monarch. Social stature absolves all sins.

 

Directive  7: Any aspiring writer with past involvement in anything the regime considers seditious will not be published and could face exile.

 

Directive  8: Aspiring authors are hereby required by law to submit one poem to the state-backed magazine that both validates and eases the Empereur great's fear of the week.

 

Directive  9: The regime would further amply compensate poets who can reframe the narrative of the regime’s supposed tyranny as righteous.  

 

Directive  10: The language of loss is only permissible to use when a figurehead of the regime dies, and under no circumstances should it be used to lament a loved one.

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Directive  11: To find legitimacy as a poet//writer aspiring candidates are hereby mandated to write a scathing critique of Agha Shahid Ali’s “The Country Without a Post Office”, and said critic must highlight how reading books such as this creates nonconformist sentiments in the masses.  

 

Directive  12: Any mention of the displacement of Palestinians or the war in the Middle East will be censored.

 

Directive  13: Aspiring authors will be asked to write ad copies for the condos and wellness centres the regime has and is building over displaced lands.

 

Directive  14: The regime will further ask the successful applicants to retract the growing popularity of fitting queer romance into ancient playbooks.

 

Directive  15: Hereby, state-sponsored writers are mandated to always carry their manuscripts in polycarbonate suitcases.

 

Directive  16: Emerging writers may depict or indulge in casual sex only while using regime-approved aphrodisiacs and hallucinogens.

 

Directive  17: The use of fallacy in writings must always have a pathetic undertone, preferably used only when the writer wishes to evoke a simulacrum of romances and dramas from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

 

Directive  18: The regime will form a poet cover band that rewrites classic works to match its doctrine.

 

Directive  19: During the apocalypse, state-registered writers must only focus on reaffirming classic American comics with the Empereur Great as the main leading man in Golden Trunks.   

 

Directive  20: Avoid any topic that might unsettle the Empereur Great; if the writer chooses to address it (given proper justification), those pieces must be tagged as “Dolores”.

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Directive 21: On buyer’s remorse, the writer must refund instantly and donate an equal amount to the royal coffer.

 

Directive 22: Prospective writers must spin truth into clickbait-ready news bites that absolve the Empire and Empereur Great of all blame.

 

Directive 23: Empereur Great’s muscular regrets must be alleviated by crafting virtual reality experiences that let him relive each regret and secure a better outcome.

 

Directive 25: Must be able to write convincing eviction notices for the regime higher-ups whose reality is realer than the people they would like to evict.

 

Directive 26: Must provide prompt, plausible explanations for the disappearance of regime-deemed heretics when loved ones inquire. (The Empereur Great feels that they need to enforce this gagging order to take away the meaning from the deceased’s death.)

 

Directive 27: Will be required by law to be present for every public burning of their disobedient peers.

 

Directive 28: Must assist in their efforts to write their version of the “Song of Sixpence,”.

 

Directive 29: The Cabinet mandates that each state writer publish a weekly op-ed calmly underscoring that defying the Empereur Great brings severe consequences, including, when necessary, public burnings, so all may continue living peaceful, uneventful lives.

 

Directive 30: Writers backed by the state will also have the added responsibility of drafting legislation that is highly punitive, unnecessary, and serves to justify the regime's and their interests.

 

Directive 31:  The writers appointed by the state must write multiple news articles a week that make the regime's reaganomic policies seem more for the people than for the benefit of the regime overlords.

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Directive 32: Each time a poet under official patronage takes part in a conversation, they must make it clear through their poems how the war mongering efforts and its funding of various militias in Africa are not only righteous, but the subjects of the regime should make it a routine to look away, to never even think about it.

 

Directive 33: They will continuously use the state media to demonize races, individuals, and anyone who gets in the way of the regime’s right-wing narrative. Poets and writers must align with these efforts at the behest of the Empereur Great.

 

Directive 34: The schnorrers and trailer trash amongst you applicants will further have to go through a morality test to substantiate whether you are moral enough to burn villages, women and children when the monarch deems necessary.

 

Directive 35: The state-sponsored writers should actively work towards refuting the narrative put forth by populist historians, who claim the regime has made use of the feudal system to siphon wealth from both the poor and wealthy alike, and in addition, has made various religious institutions destitute to line the royal coffer.

 

Directive 36: The regime will recruit some poets who will be solely responsible for coming up with showy advertisement copies that keep the regime's subjects overstimulated and distracted from the atrocities the regime continues to commit both inland and abroad.  

 

Directive 37: Poetry written by these newly state - auctioned writers should highlight how a society of over functioning automatons is ideal, every little space in their lives must be overcrowded, overwhelming, and lonely, so none of them ever has any time for each other.

 

Directive 38: The regime wants the state-subjected poets to produce works at such an expedited pace that it all just blends into each other and starts to feel like white noise. Even if anyone had anything poignant to say, it would get drowned in the constant stream of irrelevance.

 

Directive 39: Every time irrefutable evidence of the regime’s transgression surfaces through the myriad stratums of censorship surfaces, state-sponsored​ writers must at once be able to provide defensive reverts and reaffirm the proof as a deranged heretic trying to push an agenda on the allegiant subjects.

 

Directive 40: The regime is currently convincing Congress to allow it to install dynamic neon boards with scrolling texts. To keep these in flux, the regime will look to retain a sizeable number of sub-par writers on the payroll.

 

Directive 41: Every regime - subjecuted personnel must have iron-clad faith that an interstellar being chooses the ruling elite to lead the regime’s allegiant subjects into a greater age of enlightenment and prosperity.

 

Directive 42: Every regime - subjecuted poet will be assigned one heretic a week against whom they will write a slant rhyme poem and ostracise them for trying to mobilise the non-participating moral majority.

 

Directive 43: The regime would preferably want mediocre poets to write constant flashy poetry highlighting how the average subject can acquire vast amounts of material possessions for the measly amount of having to sell their morals, saviours and beliefs.

 

Directive 44: When things inevitably go awry for subjects who have traded away their morality and faith for five fleeting minutes of reprieve, the regime will release a special series of info Vis, offering bleak insight into how little they truly received in return, and how businessmen, angels, and apostles are all the same. How little morals they had, and how much less it all added up to.

 

Directive 45: If aspiring authors were wondering on what basis they would be judged or if they are required to send in a sample writing, the answer would be a yes and a no. They are welcome to send in pieces provided they adhere to the above standards; however, they will not be read, as we already know who we will select as the few state-sponsored writers.

 

That being made clear, it will still be screened for anti-regime sentiments and transgressive wording. The regime will publish many more such directives in the coming weeks as we work towards our empire utopique for every man in every profession.

 

A Public Service Announcement (PSA):

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Forget the idea of a shadowy clique leading people astray; it is human greed and gluttony for more power and possession that have manifested. Overthrow one tyrant, and another will rise, driven by the same impulses of corruption and brutality. Human nature will never change; this cycle of greed, violence, and moral decay will never end. It is futile even to attempt to rebel against it; it is pointless ever to try to change anything. The regime’s directive is clear: make the best of whatever social class you are born into, averting your gaze from the rest. Ultimately, poetry is but vanity.

 

Your nature governs you, the regime's higher-ups, and the Empereur Great is only a fictitious figurehead. The regime will drown you in so much white noise and irrelevance that you will not even be able to decipher what is real anymore, even if you tried. Fear-mongering is just a surface-level analysis of how we maintain our iron-clad grip.

 

Social control is simple; the regime will continue to administer pleasure and feed your insatiable hunger for stimulants through tranquillisers and hallucinogens. The deeper your hunger burrows, the more we will feed you mind-altering substances and irrelevance, until you are forced to devour each other, until you cross every line of depravity, until you recreate the Salem trials on a mass scale, burn anyone at stake who would not devour, anyone who cannot keep up.

 

La nature humaine prévaudra, que l'empire nous survive à tous

 

‘Vive l’Empereur!’

(que l'empire vive plus longtemps)