Sweetly reaching for my hand A rattlesnake curls up in yours. Smiling oh-so-carefully To hide your poison pellet Delivered with a kiss.
Platitudes and honeyed words With fishhook barbs inside them. Lies disguised as candy bars Offered out with sticky fingers Mostly crossed behind your back.
Promising that all is peaceful And thereβs no danger to be seen. Alarms and sirens drown those words And say my world is burning here, And sinking in a morass there.
If only words were scimitars To slash a way to truthfulness And cut the evil from the hearts That proclaim love for one and all And secretly deliver hate. ljm