Poem: Tubular Tubers

Tubular tubers must propagate rumors

of doves in distress emitting foul humors.

Now what would inspire this rank impropriety,

this cunning indictment besmirching society?

A rift is the answer, a chasm, a cleft,

a cleaving, a shearing, a conscience bereft

of feeling and thoughts of the popular kind,

the ones that come straight out of sapien’s mind.

Potatoes and ginger can’t talk to the birds

despite the conspiracies you might have heard

spread yonder and far by agents of gloom

whose trickiest trick is to make you assume

that magic exists and compassion reigns.

All that we’re asking is please use your brains,

the ones that God gave you to figure stuff out,

to fill in the blanks and erase all the doubt.

See what you must and say what you claim,

then slowly repent and demonstrate shame

at what you have dreamt and therefore believe:

this vegetable tale attempting to weave

disparate threads of avian life

into a quilt that seems to be rife

with sociopathically raw implications

is pregnant with pauses and meek hesitations.

Admit, confess, declare to the court:

When one imagines plots of this sort

He adds not a jot to the mounting sum total

of new compositions, harmonic and modal.

All one has done is salute to the sun,

having some fun on the black diamond run.