What cruelty, feigned fealty,
What unrelentingly pretentious play
Pretending idiocy, professing to be
Anything but tendentious for its own sake
To sling the subject to its last predicate,
The next best thing to being right.
Reducto ad absurdum takes everything,
Like the humidity takes Miami,
They call it impeccable logic, the rock
That crushes scissors but can't take
A blank paper sheet, so far is it
From the real, from the way we kill
To avoid going to jail.
There's a bounty, albeit secret, there somewhere,
Must be, as everybody seems
To know they will be paid
By the amount of blood they draw
In praise of the living, whose smiles are
A call to war, across the centuries
Of smug insouciance to the threat.
The dagger drops as dictated
By the perpetual motion contraption
That's been running since the beginning of time,
To bring forward everything that's beautiful;
The all-encompassing frieze, the Davids
Pulled from slabs, the spirits freed in wire ...
They call it cheese.
