Stripped of Gilt
 
I. The Rumour Mill

He built it with his spin and with his spite.
He greased the gears and fuelled it with his spleen.
He fed it froth and fancies day and night.
He stoked it with linguistic kerosene.
 
Smoke spread in sprawling tendrils that were keen
To sear the ear with sermonizing might.
He shaped a grand and garrulous machine.
He built it with his spin and with his spite.
 
Tall tales were tweaked and twisted to ignite
The roaring core where squawking jaws convene.
It purred and pulsed with palpable delight.
He greased the gears and fuelled it with his spleen.
 
He offered all the gossip he could glean.
He stirred its ever-swelling appetite
With juicy morsels — motormouth cuisine.
He fed it froth and fancies day and night.
 
Its hot air singed the ribbons on a kite.
Its tongues of flame charred fragrant fields of green.
Its rumbles widened children’s eyes with fright.
He stoked it with linguistic kerosene.
 
This knave of saintly voice and holy sheen,
As polished as the armour on a knight,
This cur who cursed The Mill and fled the scene
Had kept his fiendish, Hyde-ish side from sight.
            He built it.
 
II. All Bark
 
This tiger has a paucity of pounce,
This dragon has a deficit of flame,
All boom and bellow minus any bounce —
This titan has a Lilliputian aim.
The flash of gnashing teeth is ornamental;
(This biped has a tendency to crawl)
The spark of pluck is purely accidental —
The biteless bark has flabbergasted all.
The windows and the attic-rafters rattle.
The roses wilt and sparrows sag in trees.
All prattle with no flicker of a battle —
This thunder-tongue is out to shoot the breeze:
A toothless, clawless, spineless pseudo-hero,    
All sound and fury signifying zero.
 
III. So What?
 
I’ve heard the charge and couldn’t give a fig.
I’d rather sneer than face a fact or two.
Accountability — that word’s a pig!
It churns up mud and smears my nuanced view.
 
I’d rather sneer than face a fact or two.
The filthy truth has held my fortune back.
It churns up mud and smears my nuanced view.
It throws the slick and slippery off track.
 
The filthy truth has held my fortune back.
Veracity won’t make a moocher rich.
It throws the slick and slippery off track.
Integrity’s a goody-two-shoes bitch.
 
Veracity won’t make a moocher rich.
Sincerity will make a rich man poor.
Integrity’s a goody-two-shoes bitch —
A trait that’s mocked in Machiavellian lore.
 
Sincerity will make a rich man poor.
Accountability — that word’s a pig —
A trait that’s mocked in Machiavellian lore.
I’ve heard the charge and couldn’t give a fig.
 
IV. Caveat Emptor
 
Don’t buy the bull, don’t trust a bitter word
From spittle-spraying tongues that peddle pain —
They profit from the tempests they have stirred.
Don’t buy the bull, don’t trust a bitter word — 
Each nasty barb has bruised a heart and spurred
A spate of spite that bores through bone and brain.
Don’t buy the bull, don’t trust a bitter word
From spittle-spraying tongues that peddle pain.

Susan Jarvis Brant

If you have any thoughts about this series of poems, Susan Jarvis Bryant would like to hear them.