The following year he married Zuo Shi (左氏), great-great-granddaughter of prince Zhu Su, and they had a son together.
In 1505, he sent a long letter to the Hongzhi Emperor describing eleven abuses requiring attention, including warnings regarding the brothers of the empress.
Li was imprisoned, but later fined and released when he explained that he referred to the Zhang family, not the empress herself.
[1] Later that year, the Zhengde Emperor took the throne and Li received a promotion to deputy director of a bureau.
[1] In October 1506, when Han Wen [zh] (韓文), Minister of Revenue, and most other high officials joined forces to attack Liu Jin and other powerful eunuchs for manipulating the emperor, Li Mengyang drafted the grivance letter.
[1] Li Mengyang returned to Kaifeng to stay at his elder brother's farm near the Yellow River.
Li Mengyang was commended for opposing Liu, and he was reinstated in 1511 as deputy bureau director.
After his release in June, Li and his family stayed for a short time in Xiangyang before returning to Kaifeng.
Other poets including Yang Yiqing (楊一清) asked Li to edit their works.
[1] In 1521, an imperial censor accused Li of having connections with a Zhu Chenhao, a rebel prince, who had attempted to start a rebellion in 1519.
[1] Author Chang Wei Ong says Li Mengyang established "a theory and a vocabulary for building a concordant world based on a self that was defined through qing", breaking through the orthodoxy.