the color, swirling: chaos as an infant –
the mass-produced hysteria of violence —
abaft the swarth of what’s gone in an instant,
we stand astride – aside? – and keep our silence
as fairylands go dark, or grow more distant.
we give ourselves, in joy, as cannon fodder:
the color, swirling, more blood in the water
The majesty is fast in fade,
The purple is receding;
The clouds that lately come have stayed,
The punctured truth is bleeding
The howitzer of human voice
Is all its shells now firing,
They stacked the odds against real choice
All wrapped up in admiring
The patron saint of ‘only seemed’,
Of phony staged largesse;
A life of noise and endless words
And secrets none confess
Upon the lies are stacked more lies,
The realm of toad and fawner;
And purple mountain’s majesty
Now dies for lack
Of honor
Among a world of narcissists
He stood out from the rest;
The model of unint’rested
And heedless selfishness
But all who came to know him longed
In time, to get away;
As he turned inward evermore
And sank below the fray
The selfless lead so many lives
The selfish lead but one;
As daily their few pleasures shrink
Until they’re left with none
The energy we give, somehow,
Is what we come to get:
But we give nothing if we think
Each other is a threat
The scarcity of empathy
Pervades this age and space:
Although we see clown substitutes
Dressed up to take its place
And there he was, the model of
Impassiveness towards others;
No women are his sisters and
No men are seen as brothers
He’s in the world, he’s from the world
And free from sympathy:
He’s everything that’s going wrong
And our
Facsimile
It used to be harder to read a book
To find a book
To buy a book
It used to be harder to read a book
For most, in days gone by
But now you can read on a lighted screen
You can find the book
Can afford the book
Its easier now, then, to read a book –
But we don’t.
Tell me:
Why?
