They had to die because they lacked talent, and this was inexcusable in a poet. It didn't bother me, the idea of killing them. I knew I was making a better world. I drank three or four cups of coffee and paced, turning the possibilities over in my mind. My hands must be clean. Looking out my kitchen window I saw heavy black clouds smashing the tops of the low hills to the north.

"Everything is beautiful," I announced to the sleepy cat curled on the rag rug. "Except bad poetry."

I finished the coffee and sat down at my computer. My connection was powerful, my hypertext transmissions undeniable. I was going a little crazy, I think. I poured a bottle of bad bad X-ions into the special port on my computer. The ions were from the sun, or maybe another
galaxy or something. It didn't matter. They were proven deadly effective against bad poets of all nationalities.

The ions sizzled, racing out across glass fibers to all crummy poets computers and infecting their brains. Ha ha, I thought. They will not like this but it has to be done. The police would never catch me--they were too stupid and meat-based. Soon I heard faint electronic screams in my brain. The ions were working and everywhere keyboards were silenced as bad poetry dried up in bad poet brains. This was like utopia to me!

It didn't kill them though, the bad poets. They just couldn't write poetry anymore. Something to do with the synapses mis-firing. They started writing bad novels instead, and really, they were just as happy not being poets anymore.

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