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raise the ceiling
more room for incompetence
it’s only play money
borrowed with unborn hands
gilding funhouse promises
From my books Bohemian Scents and Riverthink
Government
All posts tagged Government
“Deception” by Denise Sedor
too much trust in the eye
for an insincere world
all is not what it seems
in this prodigal plague
of mistaken identity
more than an unforced
unwitting illusion
reality hides inside
hoods of deception
four estates of the realm
each exhibit a rampant
political scorn with impunity
better to live in the mind
with ideas of democracy
notions of faith hope and truth
undisfigured by power
**************************
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” – T. S. Eliot
“Gypsy Caravan” by Leon Goodman
break china vessels in mirrors
to get at their tantalized powders
run your tongue
along edges
that jaggedly bisect
romantic wigged
thickly-calved footmen
whose dismembered hands
hold sharp crinoline shards
that decapitate
chartreuse chatelaines
dressed in overstuffed demitasse shoes
and plump Pyrenees hounds
their pastel corpulence
fired and glazed
in havened enclaves of illicit kilns
fueled by tumblers of scotch
and spadesful of peat
upon whistling moors
in the dark
under thin dripping moons
double-jointed by shadows
thrown down
by tall drunken stones
dancing a druidic henge
each porcelain service a staple
itinerant tinkers rely on
for soothsaying commerce
with gypsies who fly the Romani red wheel
from fingerbone masts
of garishly decked out
violin-hung dreadnought wagons
or sometimes
that underhand potter
will do one-off deals
the exchequer can’t check
as a boon
for an oddly addicted old gray-beard
who might just be you
but unless you run awfully low
on that stash
of salubrious
decomposed petuntse
you won’t have to shatter
the stock that you pilfered
from Hollywood
of king’s-own-crest chargers
that caught snotty dribbles
from slack royal chins
and highly-snuffed
aquiline noses
eventually though
you and I will be forced
to slurp sober soup
from Dixie bowls
horror of horrors
it’s only a matter of time
till this false-flag
economy
raises up debt-laden levies again
on our bullets
our want-ads
and cigarettes
we’ll both remain paupers
as good peasants should
but you’ll be alone
with your entrepreneurial
demons and all
your ceramic compulsions
because I have big plans
to relocate my poverty
somewhere
where I can at least take a piss
without excisemen
holding out cups
for a share
From my books City of Pawns and Legacies (vol. 1)
Image from pinterest.com
in the swamp
lives leviathan
nostrils alert
for the scent
of men’s lies
jaws engaged
set to snap
the black bones
of deception
and here does he
thrive never once
going hungry
in this fetid
arena where
speeches are
riddles and
trust the frail
province of fools
are great ethical
quandaries civic
conundrums
enough to try
sanity shatter
the mind of an
optimist citizen
no one to pick
up the shards
but the duped
who’ve been led
to embrace the
conceit that the
broken man’s
pieces result
from what surely
must be his mean
sinister judgments
and not from
enlightened
conviction
this dangerous
dark oily place
cannot ever let
truth find escape
it must die here
on tongues of
impostors whose
campaigns contain
empty rhetoric
only to govern as
solipsist rogues
rooted deep in
the slime of all
dead and decayed
noble purpose
From my book Ephemera
“My Abstract Floral Landscape” by Linda Monfort
they present
bouquets of bullets
to credulous quail
whose darting beaks
peck at pick up and pull down
insufferable insects and grinding gastroliths
from shallow mud puddled by shallower promises
never quite finding their gizzard’s desire
delectable larvae of inchoate truth
while politics’ counterfeit blossoms
discharge all their secret ballistic fury
on waddling unwary duped columns
explosions of plumage snowflake the air
some settle in improper diadem
on the worried white brow
of a passing old bald
mournful
eagle
(originally posted April 2013)
“Old Shack” by Barbi Kutilek
once upon a political time
was a fiercely robust fourth estate
where forests of newsprint inveighed
against government liturgies parsed
but American ground has lost worth
civic culture deveined of its nerve
institutions sold off for cheap votes
that estate now a pauperized shack
rented out to limp partisan hacks
(originally posted April 2013)
“Gypsy Caravan” by Leon Goodman
break china vessels in mirrors
to get at their tantalized powders
run your tongue
along edges
that jaggedly bisect
romantic wigged
thickly-calved footmen
whose dismembered hands
hold sharp crinoline shards
that decapitate
chartreuse chatelaines
dressed in overstuffed demitasse shoes
and plump Pyrenees hounds
their pastel corpulence
fired and glazed
in havened enclaves of illicit kilns
fueled by tumblers of scotch
and spadesful of peat
upon whistling moors
in the dark
under thin dripping moons
double-jointed by shadows
thrown down
by tall drunken stones
dancing a druidic henge
each porcelain service a staple
itinerant tinkers rely on
for soothsaying commerce
with gypsies who fly the Romani red wheel
from fingerbone masts
of garishly decked out
violin-hung dreadnought wagons
or sometimes
that underhand potter
will do one-off deals
the exchequer can’t check
as a boon
for an oddly addicted old gray-beard
who might just be you
but unless you run awfully low
on that stash
of salubrious
decomposed petuntse
you won’t have to shatter
the stock that you pilfered
from Hollywood
of king’s-own-crest chargers
that caught snotty dribbles
from slack royal chins
and highly-snuffed
aquiline noses
eventually though
you and I will be forced
to slurp sober soup
from Dixie bowls
horror of horrors
it’s only a matter of time
till this false-flag
economy
raises up debt-laden levies again
on our bullets
our want-ads
and cigarettes
we’ll both remain paupers
as good peasants should
but you’ll be alone
with your entrepreneurial
demons and all
your ceramic compulsions
because I have big plans
to relocate my poverty
somewhere
where I can at least take a piss
without excisemen
holding out cups
for a share
From my books City of Pawns and Legacies (vol. 1)
Image from pinterest.com
databanks pull at our atoms
our bits of behavior
denuded of shadow
penumbras of privacy
stripped from our words
and opinions exchanged
via keystrokes and cellular pulses
transactions peculiarly personal
now lie spread-eagled
exposed to brass bureaucrats
secrets of modesty scrutinized
choices of habit form profiles
inferred inclinations
described in an evermore
sharp-raised relief
all in name of
benevolent government
smiling its mollifcations
paternalist duties invoked
with each unwelcome touch
of its impudent fingers
inside of our clothes
and our minds
(originally posted October 2013)
“Pecador Justificado” by Roberto Matta
congress in session
a communion of sinners
who worship a god
of shallow civic virtue
scoundrels and hacks one and all
Image from pinterest.com
you catapult your borrowed
oriental-grown blossoms
over the walls you lay under siege
and into the blazing ruins
of our bloodsweat-built village
scenting the fires consuming the future
as if you could demonstrate
your intentions are sweet
but each frantically scurrying
cat, dog and goat
instinctively knows the hard bitter truth
while they nonetheless scramble
cruelly fighting each other
for the too-few found flowers
unspoiled by the smoke and the ash
eating their petals in frenzies of self-preservation
hurling themselves
against timbered gates outside-barred
by the flatiron tongue of your strident ambition
they desperately seek their escape from the flames
and into your lesser-damned pockets
of privately planned
and publicly funded
tomorrows
(originally posted April 2013)
Poesy plus Polemics 