Scapegrace

A word without syllables

Behold a carnival of insanity

Where coffee is valued more highly than life, 

Where certain actions necessitate your sustenance, 

Stimuli that cuts like a knife.

Being chemically unsound isn't what it used to be, 

For in this land we are now all more or less mad.

Though what I say or may say isn't theoretically forbidden, 

Neither would the thought police look kindly in my direction.

Though your harvest is well laden for winter, 

In so doing you've sacrificed your summer,

And neither will eternity or the implacable marble statues 

Again forgive this sacrifice, 

The dawns wasted, 

The forbidden wines left untasted, 

And the soft caressing early morning light

That catches your earthenware coffee mug just so.

These summer days we often tasted forbidden fruit

In the auspices and company of the gypsies and circus folk, 

Intermingled strangely with toxic vapors from the

Leaky machina and vats built on the Ring of Fire, 

In this uncouth land where any day in such a world

We could court the beyond and breathe our last.

I can see that you don't want forgiveness, 

Or even understanding, 

Now that the Government has assured us

Of a mandatory and never ending supply of Soma,

Mood stabilizers, and anxiety medications,

A sort of paradox and contradiction to your natural repugnance

To a sick society that breeds sick people, 

Biological stimuli not estranged from rattling chains. 

This they will do for us

Provided that we always drink their water

And never again talk of Revolution. 

And so now, 

Though we are at odds and at a perpetual crossroads in this life, 

And though we be playthings of vile machinery and clocks,

Far from the rattling chains and nine to five wage-slavery, 

You might be tempted to ask that if it exists

Then what is the value of the will to truth?

Here you ask using your grammar and words, 

At best mere ghosts and abstractions from the source.

Better to be quiet, still, and know

That Truth has no name in your King's language. 

It just is, 

Beyond your syllogisms and Big Brother's reigns, 

Far from the slavery games of wealth and power. 

It's the whisper in the foliage

In a morning or evening breeze,

Where a golden light washes over everything, 

Defying the painter's brush of mimicry

And all description of your nouns and verbs. 

Or it's found in the provocations of the muses

In the great music,

where if you listen long and well enough 

It will tug at your sleeve

And show you the way 

Into the court of the sublime.