So look out sailor when you hear them croon
You’ll never be the same again, oh no
Their crazy music drives you insane. . .
                                                
                               Roxy Music

A ****** of song, a passing fit
They call to you and no one saves.
And then you loosen— just a bit:
Dopamine rolls in with the waves.

Captain—can you hear that sound?
That song unearthly screaming bliss;
Moaning sighing seas resound
The island welcomes like a kiss.

Breakers rising, cresting, swelling
Bear you towards a bone-strewn lair.
Portals open; warm, compelling
Variations: fleshtones . . . hair.

Your craft will wreck upon the rocks
Though you may live—and regret the ride,
Recalling ports and placid docks;
Oh mariner of the raging tide.

That music . . . let me hear some more!
It surges now behind the light,
Illuminating from the core
A vessel in descending night.

I talk the talk but cannot walk the walk;
My poetry falls in desert places
Failing to bring life to arid spaces;
Verse germinates to wither on the stalk.
I ought to use a better garden hose
And irrigate my plant with finest ale
My new poetic scheme could never fail,
And happy plants would spring from watered rows...
But dull esthetics scorch, and modernism
Reduces my dry plot to nihilism.
And now my muse must pay for all that beer
After she blasts my crop with lyric drought
My sonnet has been overrun, I fear
By weeds, and I forgot what it's about.

With a host of furious fancies
Whereof  I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.

                                    Tom O’Bedlam

Born of tobacco, borne on air,
Heeding the piper’s fragrant call,
Rising, as they lose their form
Circles waft aloft then fall
Shimmering ghosts of dead ideals
Magnificent in their demise
(Unlike most human enterprise.)

Wraiths emerge, phantasms form, mutating, dissipating; organic ephemera swirl and dissolve, interpenetrate in airborne Eros, a pas de deux to the power of three, wherein polylectic philosophy is revealed as a dissolving circle:

Rings must rise. There are fires to stoke:
An unnameable emotion
Mutability in motion…
Pipe enthroned in seraphic smoke.
The glowing altar: an abyss
As coals illuminate the dark
The wicked burn: a smoldering spark
Below the briar’s rim, a hiss . . .
Omniscience, celebrated, burns
To send forth children on the air
While grace eternally returns
Specifically to . . .  everywhere.
Exhaled, philosophy’s sad ghosts
Bow down before the Lord of Hosts.

Zhey is to Them as Zhee is to It...
The argument: God got it wrong.
Your singular identikit:
A plural and psychotic song
The selfish language of the young:
Confusion -- that’s your mother tongue.

The pronoun wars have lost the day.
We shall not call you what you wish,
Nor let you serve yourself this way
From your strange cracked and leaking dish.
Freshmen claim to be dysphoric,
Acting merely sophomoric.

We get it. You’re a special kid.
You came, confused, from mama’s womb
With daddy’s chromosomes outbid
By better buyers, we assume.
Have your tantrum—we won’t take it.
Girls are girls and boys can’t fake it.

Regardless how you cut and paste
Or wax autistic at your foes . . .
Reality can’t be defaced
And sin’s rebellion ever shows.
Your gender was confirmed at birth
When you arrived on God’s green earth.

Proud warrior of the gender war:
Change Romance languages, and ***.
Then count your chromosomes once more…
Till Y no longer follows X,
The Lord is God. That does not change
His truth has power to derange.

Set your alarms, y'all. I'm mad WOKE.
Order Chinese—send in the clowns.
(General Tso, you know, was white . . .
Africa's in on the corporate joke)
And every lion-tamer frowns.
Sleeping late on Sabbath morning
You might miss my woke-*** warning;
Time for you to get it right.
Soccer moms talked on, inept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Hoping lion's would not bite'em,
Lambs were roaring, panthers leapt.
(Lamb-chops are a pricey item...)
Blind-men too, received their sight,
Discovering new shades of white,
As one young sheep, determined, kept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

War on Whiteness! Dark the night.
Time to dis-empower their light.
Pull the plug on those Caucasians;
Afro-centrify all Asians!
Full-court press, seconds remaining
Final quarter: there's the game
Light-skinned Latins start complaining
People of color hold no grudge;
Whitey look for who to blame.
Take notes, brother. Here come the judge.
Fools held court. The jury prepped:
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Then— the basketball was ended.
Cross-country skiing now the rage.
Black was under-represented;
Social justice facts presented:
Winter sports now turned the page.
Nordic culture was up-ended.
Pride makes possible all, except
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

St. George Floyd is celebrated
Neighborhoods get burned to ashes
Racist rioters compensated
Whiteness hits the brakes—and crashes.
Mary murmured . . . Jesus wept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

The wokeness is so deep: they're sleeping.
Clueless legions are on the march . . .
Ignorance has Wisdom weeping;
The wokeness is so deep they're sleeping
Through the harvest, and the reaping.
Behold the view from Titus's arch:
The wokeness is so deep they're sleeping—
Clueless legions are on the march.