Most virtue-signaling flags
been hauled down came autumn
Those still up flutter like rags
bleached, frayed top & bottom
Let’s hope they still our conscience nags
those fighting flags with their hashtags
A quip of wisdom or abyss dumb?
Quips rarely realistic
we trot them out to sound clever
Tending over-simplistic
so ties to truth they may sever
Quips misidentify
meager on meaning
may oversimplify
while good at preening
Cutthroat snappy
who knows how benight
Quick & scrappy
while rarely contrite
Face it. To place a sign in our yard ain’t that hard
Along with other woke tag lines
the campaign ‘Black Lives Matter’
has seen taken down its yard signs
while White Lies still do smatter
Signs a snug way to get involved
while largely leave issues unsolved
Tittle-tattle in Seattle
Haven’t we got quite the knack
for freely shooting the breeze
for endless boorish yak
above pizza dripping cheese?
I’d rather hold out for the arcane
hoping to get bit more evolved
than being dragged down in the mundane
by someone soundly self-involved:
Spottily bit snottily
naughtily or haughtily
Does our ‘witticism’ hide criticism?
Underneath our ‘witticism’
on occasion it seems
lurks unkindly criticism
even lies & grim schemes?
As long as we don’t bore
or taking purloined pity
on those hapless we gore
what’s wrong with being witty?
Have we not learnt that life is unjust
so why do we still react nonplussed?!
Nothing so minute that she won’t handle it as if acute
She finds nothing so minute
that it shall not require
a response as if acute
like if it’s all afire
Yet again our poor wretch
keeps up her agitating
in most bountiful kvetch
that just knows not abating
As she feels powerless not to emote
right away to the non-urgent footnote
Starved of conversation?
If you hunger for conversation
shall ‘customer service’ phrases
(in copious canned aggravation)
restore the art to good graces?
Rather than a slipshod stroll
mongst hackneyed words teeming
don’t we want to fill our soul
with something redeeming?
What might punctured phrases instill
beyond piling up as word fill?
+)
-conversation = a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged – with emphasis on ‘exchanged’
How shrillness electronic made stillness anachronic
Wondrous solace of stillness
eludes us without fail
when electronic shrillness
pierces through nature’s veil
Might one of those clueless clods
(who with such hapless abandon
plugs in their stylish ear pods)
find for Net surfing a stand-in?
How without stillness & solitude
shall we re-connect with rectitude?
Howling strong in projection
Others’ proclivity
for shameless self-pride
and dull naivety
keep get things cockeyed
So you, know-it-all minion,
won’t let any verified fact
influence your opinion
or allow fairness to detract
Can’t undertake introspection
when howling strong in projection
+)
projection = (psychiatry) a defense mechanism by which your own traits and emotions are attributed to someone else
Happily hounded
How happily I’m hounded
by persistent a muse
so gratefully astounded
enthusing out the blues
Am a tree happily barked up
by inspiration infused
It’s brimming over my cracked cup
foamy verbiage suffused
Verses may be pathetic
in pace peripatetic
The language mere cosmetic
both opaque & bathetic
Delivery homiletic
its effect anesthetic
While response found apathetic
why be apologetic?
Very few poets a Byron
or Shakespeare or Neruda
Very few women a siren
and few gurus a Buddha
So what? Won’t us short on talent
at least attempt to be gallant?