The Power of Babble

Their hero made sentences not drawings

With crayons and one day broke in half

Eighty-eight in the box (for no reason),

Leaving little pieces for the cawings

He scribbled so his friends might read and laugh.

No judge would banish him for this treason.

He built a tower to gild his language,

Then praised their god when his hate made them spit

At words others spoke and rip up the page

They'd written, substituting bullshit.

The tower still stands, rotting and silent,

But for the greatest of men who scribbles

On a clapper-less bell senseless dribble. 

Asleep, he mumbles alone in his tent.

Curse

Can a country be under a curse, 

A few words of malignant verse

Chanted inside a racing hearse?

To hell with superstition!

A man, cults, and institutions

Have turned our nation sour.

The Mind has forgotten the hour

Can grow late

Growing hate,

Like an ocean filling with plastic

Leaving life crippled and spastic.

The curse is proliferating thought

That the future can be bought

And as quickly taken away —

Only the loudest given a say.

Will the worst curse have its day?

The Death of Galileo

Galileo is gone and forgotten.

The earth is again as flat as a coin

Around which the sun is quickly slowing,

Nourishing all that is raw and rotten.

A feather falls faster than a lead ball.

Beelzebub erases your recall.

The bald liar is our new scientist;

There is no proven fact he cannot twist.

Poor Galileo was forced to recant:

Today we have the canting sycophant.

Hence it’s obvious that the earth must cool;

To think differently proves one a fool.

I’ve seen a bald eagle flying backward.

A plague of fat rats invades my front yard.

DONkey Wrong

The old Donkey, at his prayers,

Ignores his betters, those brayers.

His missal is the alphabet,

Which he hasn’t quite mastered yet.

His teachers wield a paddle of wood

That stings him like gold donkey flies

When he don’t learn his lessons good,

Like mistaking his “Green” for “Ice.”

“Shouldn’t the pupil know more?”

We wonder, “perhaps he’s an Ass?”

His brothers honk a mocking snore

And let a mephitic cloud pass.

The pupil thinks, They will be damned,

But first I need my cranium crammed.

A Typology of Ignorance

Hannah Arendt: monstrous acts can be committed by ordinary people who simply stop thinking, obey orders, and fail to exercise empathy or moral judgment.

Top-hatted crows fly single file to roost,

Run the town like magicians, all for show.

The snake-tailed cat and Mr. Legnose, loosed

Like all the other inmates, love to crow.

Ostrich-legged, necky racers set the pace

While tittering dancing ghosts dance in place.

Will the man-chewing Eggman win the race?

The castle’s prisoners wail from the roof;

They were arrested without any proof.

A constrictor hangs, his neck in a knot,

From a decayed tree where men made of sticks

Perform unbelievable gymnastics.
The Ringmaster chides his caterpillar —
Ole Boss is a yapping orange terrier.

Divided Consciousness

The stones think as though they are thought silence.
Ask the big guy and he'll mouth a nothing
We’re sure will seem like astounding nonsense,
As if a pretty rock knew how to sing.
He assumes you will understand the sound,
At least that it was real, if not profound.
His minor lobe chatters like a mad bird,
Ideas made sentences like light made seen,
Each thought a secret of the grand absurd,
Pitched higher when it's noble or obscene.
We never speak or look at each other.
What an obfuscation that would create!
Each thought like second thought would obviate
The first, like Cain gunning down his brother.

When It’s All Over

After Neptune and Amphitrite, his wife,
The harpies, gorgons, and nymphs, Proteus
And Scylla, and hosts of lesser deities,
Who are these nobodies fomenting strife,
As though revenge wars were the only use
Of an immortal life beneath the seas?
“Not even a rape, just sly flirtation,”
But theft of an old conch, cracked and silent,
Can lead to the thrusting of a trident
Toward flesh transformed, sickened by mutation.
Lost to memory, they may soon be gone,
Even the famous of the pantheon.
No catastrophe did they perpetrate,
No mass drowning, no tsunami of hate.

The Jack-In-The-Box Dictator

The jack-in-the-box dictator dominates,
Green scowl squeezing envy into hate.
Sinners pray to his nibs in the store window.
Draped in gold chains, clutching His scepter,
He laughs in a ruthless show of temper.
Henchmen wait for new orders from below.
Beautiful cities outlive their architecture,
Columns collapse, statuary crumbles,
"Return my faith," a lame crone mumbles.
Speeches, even sermons, become lectures,
Endless repetitions, what everybody knows.
When the militia deploys, the catacombs
Fill with refugees and silenced deserters.
No murderers here, only torturers.

The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters

A compelling thought -- though owls, cats, and bats?
Hardly horrific. So, why should we be afraid?
We dream nonsensical sequences and shifty
Machinations of strangers with their brutal acts,
While mirrors try to remember all that was said,
Before we wake to dull, half-lit reality.
The real monsters are familiars, the mundane beasts
That could turn on us in uncountable numbers,
Always there and ready to amass and devour,
But forbear vengeance as long as we do not cease
To recognize, analyze, judge, and remember.
"Return our stares -- we will always flee and cower,
But abandon yourselves, fail to think and do well,
Our minions will claw out your heart, swallow your will."

The Eighth Circle of Hell

This, the eighth circle of Hell, where liars and frauds
Turn thwarted ambition to violent attacks,
Is the last reward for all political hacks
(Who “righteously” lied in the name of their gods).
Men of faith bite the throats of men of reason.
They tear at children with blood-stained fingers
And vow to prove vast conspiracies of treason,
Calling to chambers testimonial singers.
Lawyers and judges cringe, impotent witnesses,
Appalled by acts born of conviction, yet witless.
The less guilty, forgers and fibbers, writhe like snakes
To flee the melee, though they voted for these fakes.
Above, a bald Lucifer’s grimace hardens
As he grants all his dear minions pardons.

The Last Greenhouse

A man looked out at his black yard,

wanting to make good use of time:

I need to make one fine thing hard,

he thought, make it mine, only mine.

He stole a dozen doors of glass,

and built a house, and hung a sign

that said:  You shall not pass.

Then he bought some seeds, a pot

and dirt, and began to grow grass.

Each night he stood inside and thought —

watering grass is not too hard.

Soon the roots began to rot—

in the greenhouse, out in the yard.

Guardsman

The machine gun slung

on a guardsman’s shoulder, aimed

at blue sky, as if the war might be

won, if it could still be fought.

But that was a tornado, this only

a heavy storm in early summer, a kite-

cleaning for the trees, and exercise

for the long-limbed loping wind.

He is not afraid of the lightning,

but wonders, have I remembered well?

I should test my stride against

that lean racer’s, run for some low

roof the bolts pass by for a higher,

where the storm bashes itself into air.

He looks at the tree, chin thrust up

like a sailor’s.  The leaves thrash

in the fierce currents of the wind.

The Headless

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, “I am great,”

With nothing left beneath his balding pate.

The Dancing Monster

If you dare to tell him he can’t,

The monster starts his dancing rant.

The noise blasts an half-empty House

Where nothing stirs, not even a louse.

His legs lift just so high and pound

And pound the ground like myriad rounds

Aimed to shell the foundations

Of once allied loyal nations.

(He makes of enemies his friends

For obvious and evil ends.)

His confused shrieking grows louder,

Anger eloquent as gun powder.

When dance and rant become one,

The work of dictatorship’s begun.

Pandemonium

Potus, a defeated devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of others' so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Potus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.

The Last Days

“Some chose to run, many to hide

Inside their temples and rooms,

Where every one of them died

In incendiary tombs.

I walk in a mourning fog

Outside and inside my mind,

Hand in hand with Gog in Magog

And all the rest of my kind.”

“What are these floods and fires

And stupidity admirers

(Viruses in a cracked petri jar)?

How can I fight the coming war

We’re already losing day by day

As we run, slower and slower, away?”

Parade

The invention of the assembly line,
The conveyor belt, the repetition
Of a single simple task by one man,
Produces all that is useful and fine.
Let me push the button of ignition
On armor as heavy as a tin can.
No bullet can penetrate my new skin,
Sleek and silver and exquisitely thin.
I'm so perfect now a parade of me
Runs past the smokestacks of the factory.
I'm joined by a smart, lock-loaded army;
As we march, everyone behind his hood,
Goose-stepping, bright phalanx of right for good,
We stare down the decadent and swarthy.

Curse

Can a country be under a curse, 

A few words of malignant verse

Chanted inside a racing hearse?

To hell with superstition!

No man, crowd, or institution

Has turned our nation sour.

The Mind has forgotten the hour

Can grow late

Growing hate,

Like an ocean filling with plastic,

Leaving life crippled and spastic.

The curse is proliferating thought

That the future can be bought

And as quickly taken away —

Only the loudest given a say.

Will the worst curse have its day?

Crows (Edo Period, Japan), Sonnet #480

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.

My daughter says crows have a special caw

When they want others to come out and play.

She says they are nothing but beak and claw

Stuck to flapping smudges like to black clay.

Tonight they are a thousand cries, raucous

And shrill like legislative caucuses.

When the sun is gone, the crows, like all birds,

Will vanish and become silent as words

Pressed between the pages of a closed book,

As present as a European rook.

They huddle all night in their rookery

And at dawn explode in all directions

To escape each other, make mockery

Of murder. There’ll be no real defections.