Loquacious people love to spill
Plump secrets they’re too vain to keep.  
To tell tremendous news can reap
Friends whom novelty alone can thrill.  
The truth is common property,
And independently abides,
While forgettings are all pseudocides,
And neglectful parents can’t agree.  
Whoever lies confers a gift
Devising falsehoods just for you.  
Facts thrive where thistles never grew.  
Don’t give what anyone can lift.  
In legend consumed bread regrows
To feed a nation from one loaf.  
Truths regenerate, so any oaf
Can pluck a common, banal rose.  
Truth-tellers safely can forget,
Because some checking resupplies.
Not so with lonely, fragile lies,
Whoever lies must ever fret.  
Glib, easy tongues who scatter facts
Have given every anyone
A tale regifted they’ve not spun.  
Lies are what imagining enacts.  
The stringent claim that facts are few
While falsehoods sprout in multitudes
But where the robust truth intrudes
Mendacity’s scorched residue.  
The truth is a replenished ore
Dug from an open, shallow mine.  
Lies are a moon-grown eglantine
Or stories from a private lore.  
Facts are devalued minted lead,
Coins of a debased currency,
But lies are golden filigree
Which melts wherever sunlight’s spread.

Our senses fashion effigies
Of a dead past, useless as guides
Where strict finality resides.  
Mute phantoms drowned in icy seas.  
But halved funereal diptychs show
Reflections of the things to be.  
The not yet displayed in symmetry,
A future mirrored long ago.

The strongest passions, joy and sorrow
Contract the feelings like a vice,
A solid block no word can slice,
As lead today, and lead tomorrow.
The thicker humors have congealed.
Water alone can spurt and run,
Too light to join that unison
When bliss and sadness have annealed.  
Though salted, tears can trickle down,
So fluid in comparison
To what calamity has stung.  
So grieve, repent, blame, weep, or clown,  
And breath is borrowed from the air,
And words but clipped and scripted breath.  
Can grief pronounce a shibboleth,
Or rapture limn what’s past compare?

The boy-king wanted to incinerate
A fell and meretricious thryrus.  
His grandfather would venerate
The same staff, terrified of curses.  
His mother’d slandered the drunk god,
But regretting feckless blasphemy
She counseled them to spare the rod,
Until they heard the divine decree.  
Once the summoned prophet had appeared,  
Blind, and clad in a frayed, goatskin cloak,  
The monarch sputtered “It’s cursed, weird,
And wrong, burn it down to ash and smoke!”
The former monarch begged, “Appease
Bromius with primeval rite,  
A lord who smites his enemies
A lord too terrible to fight.”
The daughter next, “His worshipers
Run mad, and slaughter their own kin,
Even children.   The god massacres
Those who dispute his origin”
The prophet lifted up the staff
And tore the ivy from its tip.  
“Rites, massacres, don’t make me laugh,
And immolation’s sponsorship.”
He swung the staff to test its heft,
And said, “I need a walking stick,  
The drunkard has no bacchics left,
****** the goatish lunatic.”
At this, the grandfather turned pale,
And the repentant mother winced.  
Matched severity cannot avail
If fear and butchery convinced.  
A proverb soothes the quondam king
And the dowager, “He frightens you,  
But moderation in each thing,
And that in moderation too.”

Our undercroft had housed our dead
Unseen, in gloomy sepulture.  
But pagan chieftains much prefer
Barrows, where height can show instead.  
And the busier departments need
Those lowest levels for their work.
Glib passers-by avoid that murk,
And absent bosses don’t impede.      
Ensconsed where corpses decomposed,
Those in cubicles will thrive, unvexed,
And never taken from their desks,
They’ll finish the great work imposed.  
Interrers from a raucous age
Buried their kings and queens in mounds.
Since robbers filch, and greed abounds,
The wise entombed their heritage.  
Sarcophaguses, then the norm,  
Are too chilly for a comfy bed.  
The dawn should kiss those lids of lead,
To heat what blankets cannot warm.
Rather than burying in hills,
Top those barrows with their occupants.  
These somber monuments enhance
What would be dowdy domiciles.  
Coffins as cenotaphs and plaques,
Allow the dead to bask in sun,
And feel what veneration’s done.  
Hilltops make the best catafalques.

In mainland meadows, flowers tempt,
Yet spurn those animals they tease,
Except caprificating bees.  
Here, whatever’s edible’s unkempt.  

There is an isle more fortunate
Where nettles sow chrysanthemums,
And farming isn’t wearisome,  
And where what tempts must satiate.

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.

Supine, roads sprawl so lazily
That they collapse to planes,
Not aiding stumbling travelers
As knotted sinews strain.

The trouble started on the day
After the day before.  
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.
It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.  
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.  
A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,  
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?  
Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.  
But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.  
Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.  
A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.    
Striving wins because it tries.  
Forlorn despairing errs.

Badinage and Persiflage
Make such a merry pair,
Chatting and bantering all day.
No spiteful gossip there.  

Each goes without acquaintances.
Each has one single friend.  
As solitary sprites, they speak
Of words, without an end.

Some thieves have burgled every house;
The rich are sorrowing
At sacrilege and heirlooms lost,
Spoons, silks and sapphire rings.  
The poorer tenants mourn as well;
Their losses are their doom.  
Without the coin for food or rent,
Hunger and eviction loom.  
Just down the street, a misanthrope
Who lives in an old tub
Cackles at their lamentations,
And gives his hands a rub.  
He used to own a battered cup,
That and a bowl for alms,
But then he saw an urchin drink
Right out of his cupped palms.  
He learned that cups were luxury,
And threw the thing away.  
He’s happier in poverty,
And that’s just how he’ll stay.  
He boasts to passers-by he’s safe,
Since thieves can never steal
Knowledge or virtue from the good.
Wisdom alone is real.  
How better for that mendicant
If thieves could somehow take
Self-satisfaction from such prigs.
Oh mellow him for pity’s sake.

A drunkard’s guzzled several days,
And staggering outside,  
Dull and disoriented, seeks,
But cannot find, a guide.  
The hour proclaimed is even six,
Twice daily otium.  
The arrow hangs at bottom rim
Like a dead pendulum.  
The birth and dying of the light
Are symmetry in dim.
The day is leaching into night,
Or morning’s failing him.

Black shadows are all sycophants
That mimic every shape.  
White shadows seal their bearers up,
And bury what they ape.  
Black shadows curl off thick sunlight,
And launch themselves from dust.  
White shadows flake from winter’s breath,
Congealed as vapor’s rust.      
In two dimensions, or in three,
Shade and snow are booleans,
Dark in intersection tracing truth.
And snow in difference.

The crystals groan, whenever crushed
Under a melting tread.
Snow faithfully fulfilled its oath,
And did just what it said.  

In recompense for stinging cold,
This mantle vowed to be
Finer than the finest of white sands
And never slippery.

The elevator’s sealed its lips.
It keeps its secrets well.
Inside might hunch a nameless face,
I really cannot tell.  
To stand, a pair, so silently,
Bound in an unvoiced pact,
Is sore and heavy awkwardness
Light coughing can’t redact.  
An almost empty iron box
Is crushing loneliness,
Better to take on dozens next,
Shame smothered in that press.  
Anonymity’s a heavy weight
To carry between two,  
But shrouded multitudes can share
Whatever burdens you.

King David was a righteous king,
A shepherd loved by God,
And Joab did the ugly work
Without a single nod.  
A principal can stroll the halls,
Grandfatherly and kind.
His number two’s the children’s bane,  
Reviled in student mind.  
The highest of the high can shine,
All warmth and lenity,
Their trusted second is the sting.  
Cursed in synecdoche.  
Every Adama needs a Tigh,
All discipline and screeds,
Since troops can sooner love a chief
Untainted by cruel deeds.

An hour-glass stands up nice and straight
On a flat, polished end,
While bells suspend like carrion
On rods that never bend.  
Grains of sand in a transparent bulb,
Mustered in a smooth cone,  
Slip through a graceful crystal neck
To toll in silky tones.  
But as bells swing and clang, they gulp
From a meridian,  
One sideways to the zenith zone,
And fill themselves again.    
A bell will always know the time,
But still politely wait
For eager hands to yank their cord,
Even when slightly late.  
But a depleted hour-glass sits
Until impatient hands
Can flip it over on its crown
And fill its heads with sand.

The moon is grim and sly, and keeps
Pale secrets from her twin.  
She hides the darkest of her blushes
Behind a slivered grin.
Her greater, fertile, sister earth,
Greater in girth, not age,
Knows a pallid, pock-marked cheek
But not a shaded rage.  
A barren spinster, gray from birth,
Can scarcely bear to see
From callous sister such a show
Of broad fecundity.

What tempted me to join the queue?
It must be some great treat.  
Only delight could keep these souls
Shuffling on blistered feet.  
I turned a corner hours ago,
Quite perpendicular,
But as I count the corners off
I’ve tallied five so far.  
The walls are clean, but they’re not bright,
Scrubbed to sobriety.
I passed a blotch I’d seen before,
But it might lie to me.  
This line may loop into a square,
And no one’s first or last,
And all who’ve shuffled patiently
Are doomed to lose the past.
Did I ascend to this closed floor
By staircase or by lift?  
Outside must lie some wider world,
Denied a precious gift.    
The walls are bare of openings,
But we need only one.  
Quiet can’t be the sole reward
For everything we’ve done.

The sheets and blankets are too big
For such a little bed.  
They drape their fringes on the floor,
And dribble dreams with red.

The brain can’t sluice the nightmares out
Though a grate stopped with cloth.  
Thick curtains collect spiderwebs
And flutterings of moths.

The ocean waves are murmuring,
And some who walk the shore
May pause to hear some wisdom there,
And linger more and more.  

The seas are older than the old,
And jealous of regret.
Their murmurs wash out memory,
And make a soul forget.

Dour duty may seem cruel
To novices, but rasped
To callouses by some hair shirt,
Skin glories in its clasp.  

A rougher kiss is sweetest bliss
To scourged and toughened hides,
Until abraded to a scar
Where stunted dullness bides.

Words can wriggle through the cracks
Where grosser largeness blocks,
And even with no aperture
Huskless speech can seep through locks.

Life’s a very busy thing
And rushes by so fast,
And since inertia rules this world
It cannot help but last.  

Transactions plonk the daylight hours,
And revels blot the dark.
There is a grimy window near
That looks on a glum park.

The town shone cleanest in the mist.  
The clerk rushed for his train,
And if he dallied on his course,
The mist would clot to rain.  

Because he didn’t know the time,
He couldn’t find the way.  
The tower clock was crowing six,
But spires lead clerks astray.

Humbler clocks are best for humble folk;
A fob swung by his flank.  
But he’d forgotten to wind his watch,
And so the dial lay blank.