Alexander Confronts The Headless People (The Talbot Shrewsbury Book), Sonnet #469

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My Human Disguise.





A tyrant seeks with tongue or sword to erase

In his conquests every other race

But his own, put defenders to the chase.

He doesn’t have to kill to cut off heads;

He can speak black words of hatred instead.

By doing so, his voice, his anger, bled

Of honor, leaves him only his blunt spear

To throw blindly at what he thinks is fear,

As one by one his soldiers disappear.

The “headless” ones begin to speak of truth

With the insight and energy of youth,

And refuse to accept their headless state:

The tyrant himself, mumbling, twitting, “great,”

And nothing left beneath his balding pate.

The Tower of Babel (Bruegel), Sonnet #279

The young boy made sentences not drawings
With crayons and one day broke in half
Eighty-eight in the box (he had reason),
Leaving eight to suffice for the cawings
He scribbled so his friends might read and laugh.
His parents banished him for this treason.
Man built a tower to hold one language
Then blamed their god when hate caused them to spit
Out words no man spoke and rip up the page
They'd written, substituting bullshit.
The tower still stands, rotting and silent,
But for the boy, now a man, who scribbles
On a clapper-less bell senseless dribble,
While each man mumbles alone in his tent.