I.
Distant is the Gaelic poet
At play with disparate phrases.
One must harden not to notice
The starkest truths he raises.
Here, silenced poets are fleeing
From our ever darkening land.
Lost are keen, questioning retorts;
Probity is not close at hand.
Tuneful songs, lingering lyrics,
Do not ask we engage.
Easy is the love that amuses
At a cost far cheaper than rage.
Though Words may search for ampler feasts
Such briskness their quips of folly,
Corrupt, they offer pandered toasts,
Blessed by a chaser of molly.
Rhymers unasked don’t man the boats,
They risk no sail to the flood tide.
Calmly they paddle close to shore
Where the sharks do not need to hide.
The muse is out on holiday
With nothing to reveal tonight.
Truth hides as the merest mumbling.
We cannot bid a hand so slight.
Stark knowledge fades forgotten
Its wisdom dubbed corrupt.
The lone forests must be leveled
That the earthquake blithely erupt.
Older strings can no longer strum
Their tunes themselves must be banished.
Where are the poets hiding out?
Has questioning wit vanished?
Weep baldly at ignoble acts,
Sing the dirge that is requisite,
Our future demands your duty,
The poet, the more closely knit.
Words remain faithful in their acts.
They skip from wealth that bids neglect,
They allow us to freely choose,
They compel us to now defect.
II.
Vain, orange man puffed up with pride,
Forgetting life’s random favor,
Fictionally totes his spreadsheets
Like dog with a treat to savor.
He shams his wealth, self-proclaimed,
Boldly he skirts confining truth,
That Wealth in our faulty language
May pass wordlessly on to youth.
Another Lunatic raving
Dog whistles the roughest base.
The pasty, disheveled author
Seeks background the harder to trace.
Offstage the circus clown trains him.
Perfects surly, black-visaged boor.
Bickering, blessed at the fringes,
Preaches past of everlasting lore.
Forgoing mere sinews of fact,
The Slippery, sleek-coated eel,
Snarls proud with lust-ness of murder
Channeling what the mass does feel.
“Take them full to passion’s edge,
Risk marshaling the masses’ child
For they are trusting in your love
Though their needs incline towards wild.”
He keeps the malignants happy
Preaching false saga everlasting.
He retches with unworthy pride
But does not forego forecasting.
Loudly the walls take to chanting.
They echo protecting his back.
Like suitcase with no change of clothes
An easier wardrobe to pack.
The poet’s mist of words is soft.
Its diction risks the forgotten.
The filtering elite umpires
From perches starkly ill-gotten.
III.
Gone is bounty, hope for succor.
In these grim times remember light.
Remember past triumph’s full moon
In the darkness of moonless night.
Gone, cheering, unruffled patience.
Now Words become tweets resounding.
Nobility, serene, modest
Gives way to a frenzied bounding.
Virtue, never seen prostrated,
Is Gone to a cadre grifting.
Siege engines are fully deployed
As battles are ever shifting.
Gone is the clear chart of prudence
Purloined by pundits full of air.
Mere truth, now weighed as nothing,
Clots to taunting anxious to dare.
Grandstanding is the only way.
Gone, the dignity of mettle.
At the bend of each endless day
Shouts chorus whose pitch won’t settle.
Gone is a graceful mirthfulness,
A lightness veracious but mild.
They speak with anger manifest,
Praise Outercourse that rapes the child.
No more years that fed the eagles.
On flight path, no hint of defile.
Gone to avarice, sloth spirit,
The Carrion Circle at trial.
The poet must name the criminals
For evidence to be retained.
The poet must feature what is Gone
So that past function be regained.
IV.
Wealth is risen from rejected grace,
A chaos of conduct for garb.
Arrogance, the complete destroyer,
Casts a jester ready with barb.
Behold, a cobweb of spiders,
Their stitching expanding at will,
Their trap, a knit of diversion,
Sets aside our scant time until.
The sullen, sneering, spiteful speech
Of these growling, gouty men,
Jumping stocks of unfettered thieves,
No future extending past when.
Rising tide without ebbing moon,
Un-shuffled, swollen surge of cards,
Plotting an unending ascent
As profit-laden rubbish shards.
Each trickster’s fraudulent chess-game,
Gleeful deception plainly marked,
Our queen is sacrificed early
With winnings distinctly earmarked.
Salacious success abandons.
The carnival of discourse shrinks.
Songs do not stream for the asking.
But court flavor of kool-aid drinks.
Ignored, the poet finds no place
Though slanderers do not want seats.
The court is packed with marauders,
Cheerleading the raiders of streets.
V.
Death is a sinewless dotage
Without respite of cask-drawn ale.
Its trademark, a sore-filled, red cap,
Promising by selling a tale.
Grumbling girth of tempest’s fury,
A stadium with open decking.
Rants find ground in foul invective—
A fault line cut free from checking.
Romances are cast with strongmen.
Foreplay is sharpened with edged tools.
Loud patriots flirt with treason,
Finding allure in simpler rules.
Empty boasts vault with sharp-voiced rage,
A cartoon with chanting diction,
The base, intact, must be entertained
With an opioid’s addiction.
Puffed full up with shrill helium,
The flashy balloon flies unsure
It billows a blame that shatters,
Forgets union that must endure.
The poet must flirt with the flame,
Charting phrases piled high with tricks.
It may be time for barricades,
Where words are the handiest bricks.
VI.
Don’t laugh at slick jester’s folly.
For humor assesses vast cost.
Straightforward we march on duty
To regain what cannot be lost.
Each day awakens to danger.
We are haunted by dread without cure.
Dull despair must give way to deeds
That this glory-fed shame not endure.
Foreigners question our wisdom
As populace chooses slick clowns,
Gyrating bicycles play tricks
As the abandoned swimmer drowns.
Let not the young become sullen,
Speak loudly still innocent youth.
The raw pistol won’t defend you
From this quest, a moment of truth.
Quiet down, let hope of poets
Fortify our fair-treasured home.
Enlist Word as stalwart soldier,
A recruit who’s not prone to roam.
VII.
The plot of perjured witnesses,
The fog of counter-charges spikes.
We search for an upright judgement,
An umpire to recognize strikes.
A prudent sage called from pasture
Aligns the evidence quite clear.
A crowd of villains forge treason.
Called witnesses do not appear.
The defense is based on fables,
Malice, unfettered by logs.
The stone walls crouch in full standard,
Noisome is the croaking of frogs.
Poet, your sad tale is laid out.
Bitterness, timid subjection.
The characters stand before you,
What a marvelous collection!
VIII.
A parboiled slut unblessed by music,
The driest face in virtue’s path.
Lady Macbeth who flubs her lines
In a romance not worth a laugh.
Bewildered tricks of fickle world,
Two sons of lies and poisoned rage,
A daughter primping with her consort,
Random extras of a farce to stage.
Peron bestows upon his heirs
A savagery of taunting words.
The poet must halt this legacy:
The brisk march of dutiful herds.
IX.
Hidden from harm by cross uncertain
By tatters of unkindly cloth,
The Mean-spirits have been ordained,
Tethered fast in treacherous troth.
Poets must battle these pastors,
These cantors who market heaven,
Who celebrate caging children
With a bread that cannot leaven.
X.
The Poet’s Grant is quite simple:
To focus the most probing light
On the ruin here before us
In a Home that’s woeful tonight.
