CliffSongs

  Last Ride of the Sedition Caucus   Gathered in your enclaves With colleagues you barely trust. Hoping to keep your necks saved From the prosecutor’s thrust. You play the pantomimes out, While your arguments combust. Call up another inquiry with a snarl and a pout, Another sham that blows away like dust.   The horse is dead, What do you beat it for? The horse is dead, Why do you feed it more? The horse is dead, What do you need it for? It won’t carry you so far, Just exposes what you are…   So you all just sputter and fume, While you stab one another in the back. While all the adults in the room, Sigh and brush aside the feeble attack. Your own lies you eagerly consume, Running headlong down the wrong track, Attempting to avoid a shared doom With the rest of the maniacs.   The horse is dead, What do you beat it for? The horse is dead, Why do you feed it more? The horse is dead, What do you need...

  Musing on Doors   Indictment Man, You and your confederates, Reduced to nuisance politics, Affect less and less, Spiraling the lot of you Into a trap you helped make. It’s complete closure Is not so inevitable, no, As it is ordained.   See the many You have spurned. See the many You spurn today. Who among them Holds the Ikeys to your future? Rather, who among them Does not? Pleas going unheeded, Confessions another matter, We see you very well. The darkness before you Is a door that closes only once… And will never reopen. You fear to be On the wrong side of such a door. The inevitable has no such cares. And though such doors loom wide, They but lead to smaller confine. Maybe there will be TV…   Cliff Lake 9/19/2023 Copyright © Clifford Lake

  A Peace   And he came among the clamor of them. And at the sight of his face They rested.   The earth had grown both wild and weary. A garden of many wonders too abused to weep, A people of many gifts too misused to sing, Now they just shouted, Or screamed. Born into lives of low, inexorable torment, Or born into lives that command such delights, Each loudly proclaiming their existence, Until There was no repose for any.   And he came among the clamor of them. And at the sight of his face They rested.   Then one did not strain To hear the rustle of the bird in the bush, The scrabble of the chipmunk on tree bark, The stamp of a far-off deer warning, For a hush had come. A long strife ended and with it The tumult such strife brings. Then there was no more shouting, Nor were the sighs of oppressed heard.   He had come among the clamor of them. And at the sight of his face They rested.  ...

  Shouting Things   The shouting things that surround. A multitude of voices, Pick your poison or your prison From the many choices.   A rampaging beast, It’s claws dulled through ineptitude, Empty of substance as it has ever been, Loudly proclaiming it’s cause, While stripping away its own veils.   It’s minions promise protections That they may not secure, And will not survive. They huddle and plot new devices, Flailing attempts to keep hidden the web That they fell into out of simple greed.   These are the shouting things; Empty lives trying for meaning Through propping up The emptiest among them.   The beast lit large yet, It’s shadow larger still, It shouts loudest of all, Yet for all the volume It says no more than it ever has. It is indeed only a larger empty.   The trapped tiger roars loudest Just before it’s end. The paper tiger burns brightest Before it is reduced to ash A...