Centuries after the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
and Sa’di’s Rose Garden, the Gulistan,
a mythical plant from the Middle Ages
has been reincarnated by political sages.

Up there in the Zieba tree, far away from the crowd,
joined with a media consumed by powers endowed,
politicians sit bare of breast in lotus pose stances
inside an immense nest among the lower branches.

Pondering in exalted aggrandized reverie,
they contemplate new rules to restrain you and me.
Each bark shingle, curiously, looks like a tax dollar;
every new tax enacted makes the Zieba tree taller.

In ideological incest they thus occupy their days,
concealed from the rest of us by bureaucratic haze.
•