Poet Lawreate

Scandal of scandals, the law school rag, The Legal Eye, is not running the annual Joel Bakan Constitutional Poetry contest this year. For the uninitiated, the contest was created out a UBC law prof's observation that there is no good constitutional poetry anymore (go figure).

Myself being a fan of salacious double entendres and questionable uses of my time, I entered the last two years. I'll post those two entries, along with the third and concluding sonnet here. Feel free to count it out too, that's iambic pentameter for all you Petrarchan sonnet buffs out there:

Bawdy Politic:
A Constitutional Romance in Three Sonnets

From John A. to Connie

Whereas, this humble man enacts desire,
To corporeally unite and sire,
One dominion with thee. This preamble
Is but a missive, a lonely gamble
From one whose heart has oft been rescinded.
Yet with thine love it may be amended,
For a division of powers cannot
Befall an obsession so justly wrought.
Repeal thy dress, and lay with me, entrenched
In passion substantive and lust unquenched.
Against thy body politic, enshrine
We might, this challenged section sixty-nine.
Interpret without ambiguity
Love codified, in perpetuity.

The Constitutional Cuckold

What you call concern, ‘tis emergency,
For matters of love are ancillary
To naught. Whither once was paramountcy
Now you deign not, gaze yonder, to mount me!
Whose pith and substance hath int’rested thee,
Made me incidental, torn symmetry
Asunder? Why forsake my dominion,
Central for so long, for province of sin?
But hark! Ye o’erlook a double aspect,
Mine own trade and commerce with fairer sex.
Long hath I played Zellerbach to pristine
Waters of yours. Now I turn to doctrine.
I’m held immune by Ninety-One’s success,
While thee made whore of multiple access.

A Trial Separation of Powers

Is love spent? Doth my East alienate
Your West? A decision to separate
Cannot have majority from two, lest
Dissent descend to where I lay - madness.
Recall, I was your body’s First Nation,
Kind, sui generis confed’ration,
Ere our pairing ‘twas discriminated,
Struck down, failed Oakes, unenumerated.
So, this “loving tree” shall be felled. Marry
Again I shan’t. Instead, unitary
Governance I’ll seek, unless you’ll regard,
One last entreaty from this heart’s Hansard.
Would ye consider menagerie as
Tri-partite system? Too ultra vires?