The Cliche' Police

        A stuffy looking professor stood behind the podium and bent the
microphone toward his mouth.
        "The mike is open at this time," he said.  He stood back and crossed
his hands behind himself.  I wasn't prepared for the audience's lack of
enthusiasm.  About fifty people sat still on their wooden folding chairs,
on the wide green lawn in the farthest corner of the park.  This was the
last day of the Arts Festival, relegated for mopup duty on the obligatory
stuff, including poetry.  Rock bands had played to jeering teenage crowds
for the past three days, and now it was time for the "real art".  An elderly
woman rose slowly from her chair and started for the podium.  The professor
smiled when he saw her.  I summoned the courage to stand from my own chair
and felt many eyes watching me.
        I'm nothing to look at really -- an engineer in my twenties who had
been trying his hand at poetry.  The women at work had finally convinced me
to share my stuff with the public.  So here I was, trembling like the last
leaf on a tree in a windstorm.  One thing that makes me nervous about
speaking before groups of people is waiting in the queue to say my piece. 
I figured I'd avoid the problem by rushing in front of the old woman as she
stepped carefully across the lawn.
        The audience was engaged in many conversations at once, and their
distraction helped with my self-consciousness.  It's one thing to write poetry
and share it with friends and family.  It's an entirely different ballgame
to stand up to a crowd of complete strangers and pour out your heart into a
microphone.
        The microphone was huge, its head covered with a spherical silver
screen.  Luckily, it was at the right height.  Everyone grew quiet to 
"Shhhh's" from several members of the audience.  Over a hundred eyes focused
upon me, and I wondered what they were thinking, whether they were glad I
was first instead of them.  Were they all poets, or was this just a conveinent
place for them to rest between the art exhibits?
        "Don't forget your name," the professor whispered from behind me.  I
nodded, cleared the hair from my eyes, and swallowed hard.
        "Tom Swanson," I said, and then hoped they didn't think this was the
title of my poem.  "Lovers Divine," I said after a brief pause, and the
audience turned to me and grew quiet.
        "Your lips are ruby red," I said, my voice quivering with each
syllable.  My frazzled nerves come across clearly through the mike and P.A.
system.  A motion from the audience caused me to glance up from my reading.
That's when I noticed several very well-dressed men, all wearing the same
black suits and dark, teardrop sunglasses.  I continued with my poem.
"We lie together in love's sweet embrace, your lips upon mine, your touch
enraging passion's flames."
        The audience began to murmur, and once again I looked up from the page.
The three men were all standing in front of their chairs, arms at their sides,
faces like stone.  One was talking into a cell-phone.  I had only read a 
quarter of my poem.  I had to go on.
        "You are my lover divine, my heart's desire, you whom I cannot bear
to live without for a single day, a single hour."
        The men abandoned their seats and ran toward the front of the audience,
toward me I finally realized.  I had no idea what was going on, what I had
done to cause this commotion.  The page blew out of my hand on a gust of wind,
and I barely noticed, my legs frozen in place.  The professor fled the scene,
and people started to shout and cry out in distress as the two men closed
around me from both sides.
        "You'll have to come with us, please," the balding one said, and he
flipped out a badge and held it six inches in front of my face.  The metal
gleamed brightly in the sun, and I spied the large black letters -- "CP".
        "What's wrong?" I said.  "What did I do?"
        "You're under arrest," the other said.  "Cliche' Police."  He
eased my hands behind my back and ratcheted my wrists together with handcuffs.
The audience was dispersing, folding chairs scattered upon the lawn.  I was
dizzy with anxiety, as I resigned the podium and walked between the men and
across the lawn, toward a large black Lincoln idling in a nearby parking lot.
        One of the agents opened the back door and told me to get inside.  I 
obeyed his command, and two of the agents climbed into the back seat beside
me.  The door slammed shut, and the Lincoln lurched into motion.  Two more
agents were sitting up front.
        "What's this about?" I said.  "I demand to know what I've done!"
I knew I had a couple outstanding parking tickets, and then there was the
matter of a minor delinquency with alimony payments.  "Is this about my wife?
My ex-wife?" I said.
        One of the agents removed his glasses.  Two bright blue eyes screwed
into mine.
        "You're lips are ruby red," he said very seriously, then he smirked
as the guy beside him repeated two more lines of my poem.  This all had 
something to do with my poetry reading!
        "Where'd you learn to write love poetry, Mr. Swanson?  Have you
ever heard the term cliche'?"
        "What do you mean?  I've been writing poetry for years now.  Is that
why you guys arrested me?"
        "We don't like publicity," the agent said.  "And we only move in
literary circles.  But you're guilty of clicheism.  If it had been just a
line or two, we might've overlooked it.  But you just went on and on, with
one worn-out phrase after another.  With the American public's lack of
respect for poetry, it's our job to stamp out bad verse when and where we
find it."
        He hurt me with that last charge, that I wrote bad verse.  My first
ten seconds of sharing my poetry with the public had ended in disaster.
At first I pitied myself, deciding to abandon poetry forever and never fancy
myself an artist again.  But I was always pitying myself, using pity as a
lever to get my way with other people -- passive aggressive my therapist had
termed it.  And these guys certainly didn't seem ready to offer any pity.
        "Are you FBI?" I asked.
        "We can't tell you our affiliation," he said.  "But we have the
authority to arrest those we feel are hurting the cause of poetry."
        I felt annoyed at his smugness.  Who were these guys to be telling me
how to write?  What did they know about poetry?
        "What does your poetry sound like?" I asked.  "How many readings
have you done?  Ever been published?"
        "All of us are well published," he said, but I didn't believe
him.  I asked him to prove it.
        "You don't know when to shut up," the driver said, and I could see
his face flushing red with anger in the mirror.  When I saw his white-knuckled
hands gripping the steering wheel, I quieted down, at least for now.  
        We rode along the highway, then exitted and swerved around one corner
after another in a maze of crumbling neighborhood streets.  The car turned
into a long alley, patchy with tall grass and surrounded on both sides with 
aged, gnarled trees, some with dead branches, others almost stripped of bark.
We emerged into a clearing, in the middle of which sat a huge Victorian house,
blood red in color, with turrets and a huge wraparound porch.  Several
radio antennae and a satellite dish jutted from the steeply angled roof.
        I got out of the car and followed them across an unkept yard, then
down a set of stairs, leading underground and into the home's basement.  The
driver unlocked a  chipped wooden door, and we passed single-file through the
doorway.
        We entered a well-furnished office, filled with several desks, each
equipped with computers with large monitors.  Whoever these guys were, they
were certainly well-funded!  Bookcases stood along the walls, filled with
thousands of volumes.  They led me into a large waiting room lined with
chairs and then sat me down.  Across the room, a young woman was crying and
blowing her nose.  In another corner, an elderly gentleman was staring at the
floor.  He refused to look up when I said "hello".
        "What's going to happen to me?" I asked.  The woman looked up at
me, her face streaked with mascara, her hair tousled.  Then she blew her
nose again and turned to one side, so as not to draw my attention.
        "You're going to undergo cliche' training," one of the men said.
        "Wait a minute," I said.  "This is completely unfair.  You're saying
my poetry is bad, right?"
        "It's weighted down with worn, empty cliches," he said.  "We're here
to help you change all that."
        "But you've only accused me of writing cliche' poetry," I said.
"This has to be proven!  Where's my trial?  I need to talk with a lawyer!"
        "Lawyers aren't typically poetry experts, so that would be literary
suicide.  Okay, you wanna trial, we can arrange that.  We'll convene a
tribunal of poets in an hour."
        "I'll need a witness," I said.  "Someone who can testify on my
behalf."
        "Out of the question!  That would give away our location.  Like I said,
we don't want publicity."
        "How about a phone-based testimonial then?" I said.  "I need to call
my poetry teacher."
        The agent huffed with frustration, then produced a few coins from
his pocket.  He lowered his face near mine.  "Only one call," he said,
and I knew he was serious.  He showed me to a payphone in a hallway, and I
dialed John's number.  I crossed my fingers and prayed as the phone began
to ring.  I knew he wasn't around much on weekends, but he was my only hope,
a poet with a positive, encouraging attitude.  Someone picked up on the other
end.
        "John?" I said, before I heard a voice.
        "Speaking," he said, and then I began to explain everything that
had happened.  The story sounded ridiculous, even to me, but he heard me
out, grunting occasionally when I paused for breath.
        "I'll need to hear the poem," he said at last.  "Your stuff is getting
better, but you haven't read any love poetry in class yet."
        I had lost the sheet, but I knew this one by heart, my first romantic
poem ever.  The cliche' police agent was standing behind me, and I was worried
that my coinage would expire at any moment.  I began to recite the poem.  John
stopped me, after only six lines.
        "Guilty as charged," he said.  "I'll see you in class next week.
We have some work to do!"  And he hung up the phone.  I hung up at my end,
heard the click of the payphone, and the agent put his hand on my shoulder.
His face had changed, and there was a kindness showing through the harsh
exterior.
        "Don't worry," he said.  "If you plead guilty, they'll be easier on
you."  He walked me back to the waiting room.  There, a well-dressed woman,
appearing to be a counselor of some sort, was encouraging the woman to recite
her offending cliche', to see it for what it was worth.
        "Let me compare thee to a summer's day," she said, her voice heaving
between the sobs.
        "Oh brother," the agent said.  I knew my troubles had only begun.