Halfway through learning life you find therein the games
Played by the oblivious and those who made names
Then your simplicity in view begins being challenged
As make believe is by hard facts rearranged
That society is both with and without bearing
For the old warmongering and peace brokering
Continue on side by side
Each taking turns at being follower and guide
And since good and evil formidably are frontiers
Furnishing many men with careers
Many men have become showmen
Obliviously courting omen
They play for whoever pays the pipers
Be they a flock or a brood of vipers
For only to themselves are they loyal
And money is their hearts’ royal
And they call their desertion a sacrifice
Though it be a cunningly justified compromise
And all these the young wait to ruthlessly learn
As we still claim to fight a brighter day to earn
K. Muitherero
There's a story to be told,
That even Hollywood shared in part.
Showing entertainment by its fiction,
Could drown the mind and fill the heart.
Historically, great showmen of the day,
Would sculpt their molds with fantasy.
With enough breath of reality present,
To confuse and convince them of heresy.
Sadly, this playbook has a lengthy heritage,
As dark, cultish chapters spread throughout the land.
Where a sprinkling of legitimacy provides shelter,
While the balance follows the judicially planned.
Our most recent display of this power,
That left the majority harmless and weak,
Reinforced how wealth interacted,
Against poverty that wishes to speak.
So with steady messaging sowing a seed,
Where now great doubt was not remote.
The drumbeat of infinite freedom was heard,
As they sought a selective vote.
Through it all, the struggles continued,
From the pulpits to our highest courts.
As the powerful seek political refuge,
Behind the dollars that offer supports.
The spring carnival will soon be arriving
With exciting rides and strange exotic shows,
Loudspeakers will blare with old disco jiving
Flickering neon lights causing nocturnal glows.
With exciting rides and strange exotic shows
Featuring the weird and impossible stunts,
Flickering neon lights causing nocturnal glows
Barkers and showmen, workers, and grunts.
Featuring the weird and impossible stunts
Parents shielding children from scanty-clad girls,
Barkers and showmen, workers, and grunts
Steer them to Ferris Wheel and Tilt-a-Whirls.
Parents shielding children from scanty-clad girls
Enticing naïve bumpkins to enter the tents,
Steer them to Ferris Wheel and Tilt-a-Whirls
Where good times are had with better sense.
Parents shielding children from scanty-clad girls
Loudspeakers will blare with old disco jiving,
Steer them to Ferris Wheel and Tilt-a-Whirls
The spring carnival will soon be arriving.
HONORABLE MENTION
written March 30, 2022
"Carnival Time" Poetry Contest
All Poetry
July 10, 2022
Fashionable spring swirls her leaves, in a fancy cloak
Waltzing winter rapidly over the hill, beyond the rise.
April sneers as grass hoppers flick from blade to blade
Have they returned to life?
From their snow coffins?
Luxury and joy are tossed about by daffodil showmen
They have popped through the last threads of gray white snow
Looking perky and fresh against the cold dinge.
Sun comes back to take additional licks of the cold stuff
By Wednesday the monarch will be here
The rabbits are ready.
Come one! Come all! It’s showtime all the time!
More glamorous than all fantasies told;
tip of the tongue or the hand of a mime!
The circus has something for young and old!
The big top filled with families and friends.
Horrors deep within peeking through showmen.
Painted on expression; an evil blends.
A monster inside disguised with a grin.
He draws children in with his silliness
and sends them all away with a balloon.
Enthralled by the blade he gives it a press.
Did I tell you I’d be seeing you soon?
Cackling he offers, to the wound; a kiss.
Nightmarish is a clown at the abyss.
imagine the sardines
in the tube
swimming round and round
against an unceasing
mock current
do they know their place?
Doomed to live as an aquatic chandelier
as perpetual showmen for the sake of our “knowledge”
Do they know?
Im terrified to think that they might not,
because then maybe we dont either.
When Death was free to roam the world,
unconstrained by science and medicine,
when doctors were mostly showmen,
and priests held the final word, then...
then people believed in God and in
heaven's bliss and hell's torments.
We moderns think that quaint now,
as we look back, we so much wiser,
battling microbe killers while our
instruments poke the universe, our
knowledge galloping ever faster till
now we think death is the end, there
will be no more, and angels are left
only in those obsolete shelters that
house illusions of a sad dead deity.
'Be thee so sure?" an ancient prophet
might ask-- for if you are wrong in
the measuring, in the weighing of
this world, then what world might
await you when body/ brain expire
and you find something still exists,
an imperishable mind, one far beyond
our mortal understanding clipped
by our senses and our feeble fears?
Then you will know your soul,
you will know you are immortal,
and you will know that God is All...
Moment of truth, when you know
that's how it is, not just so/so,
the farmer, laden with his cares
translucent, like a foreman's stare
His grain bin, old, closed, now for rent
the corn, piled up in increments
is shipped out pronto, never lent
to one another ~ shortage bent!
A coffee shop ~ set up to go
they just discuss ~ their moments slow.
What is the jeopardy, who knows
it's corn to gas tank ~ "ethanol!"
No cattle ~ earmarks ~ rodeo
just hire the singers ~ tattoos blow
how macho ~ loud ~ music, oh no!
just hire ~ showmen, we're too slow!
We've gone too rusty ~ get up/go
not necessary, meet at Lo's- (Lola's)
and grasp our plenty ~ hey wait, whoa!
our taxes entry ~ still implode!
Who said we had to ~ mandates stow
those contracts burn ~ we're in the hole,
that ethanol plant, pulls more & more,
and price of gas ~ it still stinks so!
We've just been had ~ corporate scroll,
our Constitution . . . . . needs console!
Whether poets, showmen or philosophers,
Or mere cowboys who follow herds—
They all want to leave behind a lasting mark—
More than frail paper etched with words.
But the cold, hard truth still lies in the doing
And all but a blessed few will fail—
But on we go like bison over the cliff—
Hoping our wings sprout and we sail.
And like restless sleepwalkers we do wander
From one thing and then to the next—
Till we find what it is that will then save us
To put life in proper context.
So on we scribble and strive for the right phrase—
Catch meaning and life in birds—
Put emotions and feelings we briefly hold
On this frail paper etched with words.
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