Like self-propelled pool balls
bouncing off bumpers and borders
come the idiots who wear their words
like awards of truth, pinned to labile
tongues for loyalty, courage, faith—
so many dawdling, flightless birds.
They will never see the other side
of their extinction, their pointlessness.

The thick-skulls are born to believe
anything that sounds truly absurd, they
lack the skill to recognize the image of
themselves fighting against themselves
like some dumb fish in a mirror-bowl,
unblinking with its mouth always open.
Their path is one—closed circles.

These pretty dolts, with their charming
allure, have to take turns to keep up
the charade around the world.
After so long, you’d think they’d tire
of the long engagement, which carries
on and on in empty blurbs and bubbles,
squawking about nonsense no ruler
can measure: “It cannot be unmeasured!”

What must the echo sound like to them
against the silvery lens that bends
nothing into a ridiculous, dumb image—
all those steel coined gems, valueless
encircling disks with no substance within?
The ledge they dance against, unlistening,
will not hesitate to let them all fall off.

Nature requires no faith to act as it does.
Only mindless things, low-born things
throw themselves against the ground
and call gravity, dirt, or darkness a demon
for being the force that pulls them down.
They cannot dance like their delusions do.
Their fallacies are all one—a mobius strip—
a shallow face that sees only itself.

The rest of us look for a way to fly
even if our wings are technê, imaginary—
our rituals serve life by observing it, imitating it,
taking forms that can be weighed—recreating them.
We are the creatures they call grotesque,
the namers, designers, explorers, inquirers—
we are the creatures who survive best.