Primitive Word Magic
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

Some rhetoric recycled from the past
That once would make an aardvark look askance
Rehashed, resuscitated, wrong, recast

As insight into insignificance
Upon no basis but assertion bold
Deserving not a moment’s second glance

The answer purchased; then the question sold
For those convinced, no doubts were entertained
No reasons sought by those within the fold

Square circles in tautology contained
No exit for the muddled mind of man
Each one of fabrication’s fibers strained

The fraying fringe of falsehood’s flimsy fan
All adequate to end where lies began

The pampered precious parasites profess
To know from whence they speak while talking rot
In fact, they seldom little more than guess

At what makes mucous different than snot
Like Tweedledee they say, contrariwise,
That as it ain’t, then therefore it is not

Yet sooner than they hoped to realize
A dwarfish thief tried on his title’s robe
And found his shoulders too small for its size

An uninspiring ruler of the globe
Drawn from a list of dimwits learned by rote
A callow, cranky, crude cognitophobe

Too deadly daft for language to denote
A kid crusader with no antidote

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006-2010