Trained Seals

back-handed compliment syndrome

rages in the consultant's demeanor

and he says with such a loving

voice that we need to control

what we can control but that

tone rings so hollow

 

the kind of hollow that one uses

to differentiate between a bamboo tube

and a steel pipe even if the lengths

and diameters are held constant

 

sniffing toxic fumes from

the borrowed blue highlighter

might have the same initial

effects as caffeine but may

lead to inevitable organ failure

and inexorable brain death

 

he drones onward about

the theory and practice

of vocabulary and the

southern lady voice emerges

from beneath the writer's facade,

 

differentation is like

differental calculus done

with differental braking

 

and the workshop-slash-

seminar-slash-professional

development has devolved

into what lemmings act like

after frontal lobotomies

 

the madness is abundant

and almost neverending

 

and turds falling from

a*****e into commode

make a far more glorious

sound than any consultant's

mellifluous and duplicitous

tone and prose

 

right now, dreams of

volts, amperes, ohms,

dryer cords, range cords,

dreams of completed projects

and seeing missed family is

the order of the moment

 

yet he still drones on like

the neutered and unneutered

honeybee that he is

 

and all the scribes hears

is the ever-present midnight-

to-six-AM television static

 

it just feels more

elongated that that

 

nose as long as a

telephone wire

 

this is what happens when

free money is offered

 

you will be trained seals

whether or not there is a

fish award in the bucket

 

and so on

 

and so on

Reviews

[Cascara (aka Sprint Goe..]

your pessimism penned over here couldn't be any truer

nice poem

[Kenneth The Poet]

Thank you, Cascara.