4 July 2025 Juxtaposition Contest
sponsored by Regina McIntosh
Can a lie be true?
Unwittingly!
Can truth be a lie:
unable to see?
Is what I perceive the only truth;
or, just my angled point of view?
Where is the bird’s-eye scene:
the whole, the real
that holds all things, and all of time?
Surely, that is God’s:
not mine.
Politics governs our
temporal lives
Religion conscripting
eternity’s prize
Together they’ve killed
more than famine and war
A plague that still haunts us
—to shun and deplore
(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2020)
Loose cannon fires a sure salvo;
Aim for quick wit to spring wild jest;
Urge can fashion as pun demos;
Grip humour's fit in silly fest;
Hurl a new joy with banter mild;
Throw a joke there with metaphor;
Embrace fond ploy to roar most wild;
Reach a somewhere beyond before.
Hide your sad gloom in laughter's sway;
Emote and purge your tension fast;
Restore your room with happy stay;
Enjoy pure surge of wit that lasts;
Invite good cheer to settle here;
Numb your old fears as humour steers.
Leon Enriquez
24 June 2014
Singapore
we are herein doomed as we fake the smiles:
Therein groomed as me rake the wiles-
Sins splattered stiff to our shadows
Lurking unflattered from the laws.
sins fall like sounds from the Trumpet
The Law selling its indulgence,
The church singing in different pitches
About Christ, their rhythms Hoarse from
greed and lies.
Bibles interpreted vociferously like literature.
while we croak hoarse in the pious world,
Penitents reduced to the ranks of pious Alms Givers.