The news broke in the New York Times
That by the year 2032
With the help of computers and search engines
All the metaphors of poets would be exhausted. 
The ad agencies, smelling a fresh well, 
Began to trademark the remaining ones.
Jello commercials, after all, do not write themselves. 
The language poets remained unfazed,
Metaphors floated by them like cows in Calcutta. 
In 2020, with the deadline fast approaching,
The Supreme Court declared all metaphor and simile the final frontier
and then the gold rush began in earnest. 
When the ases and likes had been pinned down
They went trolling for others. 
Weyerhauser speculated in Joyce Kilmer’s trees
While Monsanto bought up Erica Jong’s tomatoes
And even Orlovsky’s smiling vegetables.
3M applied and won the patents to Pope and Mallarmé,
While FedEx bought the use of all poems about speed and punctuality.