Controversial Stink Tank Scholarship
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

The stink-tank civil suitors file their case
And mumble mumbo-jumbo to the judge
Which only serves the language to debase

As twisted, tangled arguments they fudge
Until at last by logic overruled
They hit reality that doesn’t budge

They ape the mannerisms of the schooled
The Controversy, they have plans to teach
Which equalizes both the wise and fooled

The parrots prompt the parakeets to preach
From pulpit perches precinct priests ordain
Whatever noise will transmit as a screech

Their neuron-numbing Newspeak novocaine
Anaesthetizes acres of the brain

Precipitous procrastination palls
Peremptory paralysis gives pause
Predestinated purgatory calls

Political religion chews and gnaws
Upon our words, destroying what we’ve got
Confusion’s craft consolidates its flaws

Which ties attempts at thinking in a knot
He must make every word an easy spell
Who has used wars for sale upon his lot

Opaque and closed as any oyster shell
He thinks that lies obscure his ghastly goof;
That “good intentions” pave no road to Hell;

Oblivious to evidence or proof
He thus from rude reproach remains aloof

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