CliffSongs

  Home is Where the Assault Rifle Is   The promises deflated, The charts pointing nowhere. The statistics dancing to the strident melody, The midnight rant, The better bully welcomed. What warm air can further pump the ego? More guns. Get them out on the street where they belong! Bring the fear home. Show the world! Flaccid power display. Shake your fist at the lies you tell: That’ll show ‘em! Bring the fear home, Swamp the streets with the unnecessary, How that wets the pants! Power over your groupies slipping, You show them more guns, That’s entertainment! This is the circus, Will they do without the bread? Have you found your Colosseum, Or the Bastille? More guns then! Bring the fear home! March the military round and round! When two or more are gathered in democracy’s name, Is that a riot? Certainly some find your moves laughable… And some find lockdowns distasteful, And most of those voted for… More guns th...

  Dead Silence   Why do you shout so? You have been heard before. Though not all your words have been so clumsy. Still, some have disguised their intent. Too long you have professed charity, Too long you have written the moral. Too long behind the compassionate rifle, Too long taking careful aim. Soiled virtue your superhero cape, You become the cartoon villain. The generous hand can also wield the whip, What price goodwill? Transactional friendships tire eventually. Broadcasted voice gone strident, Your red glare rocks the ramparts, Stripes and stars inverted fly. Has your twilight come at last? Or is dawn yet coming, Not as much a rebirth as a lesson: Dark will not endure. Will you again be a giant, But more gallant, More genial, More grounded, And less grinding. With such hands, Giving could be lavish, And still provide comfort at home. No miser has yet carried his savings beyond. Let these times be the pain of g...

  Copping the Disguise   Cop the disguise, Terrorize.   The smiles into eye unentered, Poison penmanship dripping gratitude barbed, Shared experience of shared invention, Doubled faces birthed of troubled graces. Manipulators manage, Missed messages mangled, Mixed messes meddled, Maimers most malevolent.   Cop the disguise, Terrorize.   Led astray by one’s own lead, The path accelerates, Going inward, Getting nowhere. Fly, you fools! Choose your misdirection! Onward, onward! Where have you gone to? Where are you now? Who are you now? You’ll never tell.   Cop the disguise.   Choose your form, What will you do when the label comes off? Unmoored association, Unmasked aberration, Unhinged accumulation, And above all: Constant customization. Can you still hide behind the shine When the chrome has got too soft?   Terrorize.   Presume, present, placate. Practice ...

  Contested   The rose in the garden stretching thorns, The sweet embrace awaits… An innocent lambskin concealing wolf within (my what big teeth you have). Access the displayed beauty, Win more than the proclaim. Experience warns: Not everything is as it seems, Caution is valor’s better measure, The thorns revealed, The teeth unveiled, Let the bloodletting begin. Poison points made, Does the other know? Education ensemble escape enactment, This game has no winners. What can one make of the separate claims? Depends on who they’re talking to – They never sound the same. Suffrage! they exclaim to one another, The refrain rings hollow third party. Cracked mirror reflections cast, Jagged perception presented. Exposition elapses elusive, Can’t be seen through selective confusion, Occam discarded. The thorn that pricks itself, The pelt that gnaws at the caught leg, The venom sweetened served, The side-eyes of the each, T...

  Place   There’s a dark place You never go there You can’t go there It’s too dark there Sometimes you look at it The dark place   Why is it so clean You haven’t gone there No one can go there You don’t go there   Because of the bad thing Because of the what did you do Because of the why did you Because   Why is it so clean You never come here You are here   Everyone saw it Everyone saw you They saw the what did you do One of them asked why did you They did not ask again None of them asked again None of them can ask again They always ask again   Why is it so clean No one can come here You are here It’s so dark here At the dark place But you can see You always see You can see the what did you do Until you can’t look anymore Then you don’t see   There is a dark place You never go there You can’t go there You always go there   What did you do? ...

  Flight of Atlas   Atlas flies, Helios beckons. What solitary sojourn Has set him on this course, His aura trailing after? What dark depth has spawned him, That he would make this glancing skirmish, And sail on unbowed, But not unmarked. See the sages cast their sight upwards! They will have his secrets! They have descried already his eccentric flight! They have calculated him hyperbolic! They have given him many names, But he answers no call. Atlas flies, Third of his kind, Or so we have observed. We watch from below, Though his speed outpaces our songs of him, He has not escaped our watch. Brave Atlas! 6 miles of him have traversed unknown arcs, He flies through our heavens, His banners flowing behind, Speaking no threat, Except to those mystics That seek to educate their purses. Atlas flies! Cast your vision upward then, That you may catch a glimpse, Before he hides behind the sun, And then emerges, And ...

  Edge   Should you find the edge of the world, What would you then? One step forward and Might you be carried out of time, Swept to existence ethereal, Or to some terrible end, Or worse, Eternally fall through an empty cold, Frozen forever, And forever unfixed in space And time. Would you find the edge of the world, If it meant you must step forward, To be carried forth in existence, Forsaking your time here, To grasp for the ethereal, Or to understand terrible truth, Or worse, Understand nothing, And simply forever fall. Could you find the edge of the world, If the path were plain before you, Some step onward, Carried forth through time, Or beyond such contrivance, To become ethereal, Understanding things of terrible meaning, Falling beyond space and endings, Forsaking what came before, As if that once had substance, Or meant anything. Where is found the edge of the world, Will you step forward, Toward a p...

The Colbert Retort   Suppression, Repression, Transgression. The bully in the hotseat makes complaint and –   “FREEDOM!” they cry, Let the denigration mantras ring! – As long they sound their own chosen targets… God forbid an unwanted truth be spake – Disinformation bubbles are fragile.   Epithet, epithet, epithet, Disparage, defame, and deride, What fun when directed at people You already don’t like. Let no return be made! Let no fact reply! The thinner the skin, The deeper the pierce.   What night-call dares defy? What compare spoken in dare? What mock made in the night? What easy observation thwarts? Here is a tongue needing cut! Here is a voice requiring choke! Here are wings craving clip! A cull is called for.   Suppression, Repression, Transgression. The bully in the hotseat makes complaint and –   O ye corporate craven, Power is a granted thing, And knees begin to ache when b...

  It’s a Wonderful Secret Life   “There is more to life than having everything…”   The past trails, Hidden, Yet popularized, Obscured, Yet glossy-pictured, Shadowed, And yet recorded under the brightest lights. Hype and hoopla sought desperate, Now suppressed in desperation. Is some monster lurking in the trailing past?   (Yes there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.)   Code the convo, Whisper in the public places, Say nothing and say it all, Discuss, discuss, Wrap it all in the pretty package, The matter may not be spoken plain, But the matter is spoken, And I know I will not speak it loud.   (Nor will I, since I also know what it is.)   Share and share, And share alike, Birds of the feather unmentioned. Left behind for other pursuits, Pasts inextricably tied. Darkness swallows some, Bright lights take others. Is there so much separation?   (We have certain things in comm...

  The Broken Promise   The broken promise: This is what we are, The broken promise. We held ourselves so high, But that was only our estimation – Now we swim with our sewage. Our systems aren’t just breaking, They are not just being degraded, They are being savaged, They are being inverted upon themselves, And perverted against us, All of us. We are the broken promise: A beacon pledged, Now stained in red, And glaring orange. A light that shines not for humanity, But that illumes our inequities, Our inadequacies, Our failure. We are the fading spark, Creating our own ash, To be blown about, By an ever more despairing wind. We are the ray that could have been, That should have been, That is no more. We are the broken promise: A voice against the din of oppression, A call to betterment, An exclamation of hope, and of fervor, A roar against madness and degradation, But we are become a screech, An expression of ...

  Bits   The bits keep coming off. They don’t stick around long, They melt, or dissipate, or… When he said he was coming unglued, I didn’t think it meant This. He found it in a pawn shop, the book – Arcanum Exsistentiae , Old, Leather-bound, A curiosity smelling of... The shop owner let it go cheap. The bits don’t disappear as much as Fray? Fade? Flee? I think all of those are right somehow. I asked who was going to translate it. He said he understood every word. He also said he didn’t know how. He read some to me, Until he stopped. Until the bits started... They don’t fall, But they don’t float, They Waft, Like feathers, He said we’re feathers, The book says we’re feathers. “Feathers of Life,” he said, “Held together by...” Then the bits began... feathering... I’m going to try to get him back. I can read the book, I don’t know how, It’s still Latin but... I’m going to try to get him back. I’ll let y...

  Shade   The pulses, The ones and zeroes, They echo across a creation as intangible as breath, Their reality is the product of arrangement, Constructs that disappear, dissolve, disengage, With the flick of a switch, Or the whim of a nature uncontrollable. What real phantom will you embrace? What impalpable rock sets your feet? What two-dimensional figure do you reach for? Only the glare of the screen answers. Words. Words, words and words. Colors and sounds from any distance unresolved, The flat plane observed, Lifeless, Though it resembles animation. Without a mouth of its own, It consumes. There is no reality here: What is meant to be seen is seen, What is meant to be heard is spoken. Words. Words, words and words. They are but a shade of the speaker, Insubstantial as the breath required to speak, What is seen is meant to be seen – Reality has more bruises. Imperfections hidden by pretty phrase, Implications misr...

  Beast   The chest is now no longer unbeaten, The hulking imbecile is pacified, For now… Only for now. But the ego hungers, There is no satiation. No reward is large enough, No praise loud enough, No blood hot enough to satisfy, “More” is the only answer it hears now. The beast is ravenous, The animal is rabid, The creature rages, And still it is uncaged. It will not be tamed, It cannot be tamed, It will rain itself upon the world as acid and fire, And still it is uncaged. It has revealed itself: It is lunacy embodied, It is a careening carnivore, It is demonic and unmanageable, And it is eyeing a terrible weapon: It wishes to release hell, And all of us know this. It must not be allowed. Yet, The safeguards have been gnawed upon, The controls are weakened, The buffers assailed, And it senses its moment… It must not be allowed. It has wished its entire existence to be feared – Now is as good a time as any f...

  Long Secret   They had developed the drug in secret. It didn’t do what they wanted. He had lived longer than expected. They tracked him and his movements. He disappeared while they were watching. He outlived all of them. He had lived longer than expected. He showed up in the records again. He was not supposed to be there. He had lived longer than expected. It was too long. They investigated the records. He was everywhere. He was in plain sight. They couldn’t find him. He came to see them. He came to see the test records. He disappeared while they were watching. The test records disappeared with him. They looked for him everywhere. He was not in the records. He was nowhere. He had disappeared from sight. They never found him. They wanted the secret. It would do what they wanted. They searched the records. He was nowhere in sight. He had lived longer than expected. He outlived them all.   Cliff Lake 6/4/2...

  Weapons for the Bold   Weapons of the Old Houses languish, Awaiting their time. Walled away in timeless chambers, Hidden from the unwary, Denied to the unworthy, Arms meant for the bold hand, More for the bolder heart. Forged in the Fires of Anguish, Not steel, Not bronze or even gold, Knife and spear and sword and shield, Fired strange and wondrous, And deadly when wielded by the just. Long ages kept, Still untouched by tarnish or decay, Unlocked at need for the last defense, When all other armament fails, And need is dire. For a foe yet lurks unchallenged – A monster tearing at courage and trust, A brute savaging empathy and ethos, Leaving in its wake rot and weak wills. Still it hides, Wearing the face of tyrants and bullies, Of corrupted officials, And gathering sycophants and quislings To do its bidding, Until it may declare itself in the light of day. Then will the latent spaces open, Then will the relics sh...

  Hope in the Dark   It is not enough to speak of hope, Impalpable and distant often… Hope is initiated by action, Be it small, Be it unglamorous. Hope is transfused through devotion, Through adherence to a just cause, Through empathy and a kind smile. One must apply that hope: One must be that hope. Ruthless resolve is called for, And a dedication to decency. Hope may cut through bleak times, Hope may suffer through the gloom, Hope is the knowledge that the dark Always gives way to day, That the night is punctuated by the stars, And that the moon returns to her fullness always, And the patient one will see her again. Hope is not blind obedience to fantasy, But is the flower lit by a single ray of truth, A fact piercing the fog of desperation, A handhold at the precipice unlooked for, Yet present all the while, One only need widen the gaze, To see that the clouds end at the horizon, And know that all storms pass in time. ...

  Relics Remix   Relics stolen from unspeakable eons, Misunderstood, Misrepresented, Misused. Curated control. Marvels of unadmitted civilization, Mysteries adorned in ritual, Explanation buried beneath conceived canon, Manuscripts long tainted, Mistakes made in millennia, Necessitating mandate, Guilts absolved in the text. Hear the holy men declare themselves! There is no doubt of them, Given the endless repetition… Miracles long past lose their potency, Though reaffirmed often in blood. Ancient words ring hollow Until twisted properly, Revealing new truths, Born from greed, And justified with slaughter. Now are the relics repurposed, Repolished, Held aloft for new reverence, And a better violence. Let the credos ring out! Let us misinterpret the scrolls In our own image! For bloodletting is sacred, If one reads between the lines. Therefore, let us choose carefully, And reimagine all To suit our present nee...

  A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT   Dear U.S. citizens, Your residency retention tax is due. Payment must be immediate. Cryptocurrency is preferred for tax purposes, And may be eligible for a discounted rate, If and when we feel like it.   Please see attached Dermahue™ chart for your rate. Remember: tanning is no excuse!   This administration would once again like to congratulate Last month’s winners of the Produce Lottery – It is understood that the tomatoes Weren’t as overripe as in the previous drawings. Congratulations!   Be advised that the Produce Lottery Is suspended Until such time as The labor camps are restocked With fresh “voluntary” homeless, And the remaining political agitators.   Citizens, The rumors of a deadly strain of measles Continue to be false! The cities of Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, and Boston are fine! All should be back online shortly, And as vigorous ...

Keeper   It ticks on, A nameless device, Purpose forgotten, Or too menial to require record, A mindless automation. Powered inexhaustibly, Its maker left his mark unstamped, Thinking his name to survive All the abysses of time. It ticks on. What set this piece in motion? What unplumbed mind placed it so? Some creature unimaginable? Or merely unimagined by such as we? It cannot say, Or does not, A mechanism dumb, The long slow years counted, But without a why, Only the what is measured. It ticks on. Should we mourn such heedless existence; It would not do for us – Senseless and mute, A thing out of time immeasurable, Except by it. How many decades has it seen? How many centuries, Millenia? None. It sees nothing, Knows nothing, And keeps what secrets it had, What utility was its design, And solely functions without use, Beyond use, Of no use, But to measure the moment, And then another, And one more, ...

  Low Dose   How many homeless Can you ignore Before you must Assuage the guilt with a dollar? How many hours of television Will you binge Until your attention span gives out? Don’t ask me, I’m just trying to keep My sodium intake down.   How many foreign wars Can you ignore Until you must purchase A ten-dollar care package? How many congressmen Will it take To ruin or save your retirement? I wouldn’t know, I’m just trying to keep The porch pirates away.   How many years Will you allow to pass Before you realize You can sort of cure Your insecurity with a new phone? How long before you see You’re screwing up your kids too? Not for me to say, I’m just trying to keep A low profile.   How much credit Debt do you need Before you get sick Of dusting off all the junk you have? How much responsibility do you ignore With the right balance of medications? I couldn’t guess, I’m just trying...