Clacking belongs to hollow shells,
And echoes stilled, and tongueless bells.
Toys are made flimsier than tools,
And sloth is banished from the schools.  
When clacking’s ceased, adults relax.  
Childhood is hardship and attacks.

A hungry alphabet will flock
One word to several things.  
Taut meanings have diverged
From verbal hankerings.

One of their neighbors is afflicted
With a fell spirit, lost, and doomed
To roam alone among the tombs,
The spirit’s fierce, but some have tricked it.      
Citizens have bound the madman tight,
Caught him in fetters or in chains,
But strength no ligature contains
Breaks them like braided aconite.  
And after this, they let him be
Because his might has always snapped
Twine tying wrists, but flesh has trapped
Unspeakable malignancy.

This sleep has sunk to catacombs
Where dreams are dreaming of themselves,
And where they slump to deeper shelves
A dim and voiceless banshee roams.  
Interlopers jostle memory,
And pressing on his signet ring,
Take on the seal of realer things.  
Truth’s rejected for hyperbole.  
Delusions stack in strata, drowned,
Lives never lived, in parallel,
That puzzle sleepers who can’t tell
Where waking lies, so lies confound.

Some planets flatten at their rumps.
Some have grown a paunch, and not quite round,
They wander from their orbital bounds.
Ellipses bulge because of lumps.

For ***** to bounce is very rude,
Unless they dropped.  Ascendancy
Is boldness we don’t like to see.    
And roundness really is quite lewd.  
For spheres, directions are the same,
And favoring the vertical
Is impudent in a mere ball.  
A proper toy should be more tame.

Desiccated youth has bones like cork,
So porous strong in cells.
Lost time perfuses emptiness.
And heavy dolor quells.