The babbling brook


What is madness?
Is it worse than sadness?

The things he finds to amuse
With subtle bits of abuse
Inside the mind full of gin
Trying so hard in the din
To tempt a maiden fair
Into a lion's lair
But the maiden fair, a witch
in disguise, o the bitch
Turns him into an ugly toad
And leaves him on the road
O woe is he stuck with wheels
Speeding over head and heels			12
As a man he would vie
As a frog he may die
Such is the stuff of life
Waiting to find one a wife
Someone like a queen
But a house she won't clean
Someone like a maid
But will the sheets be laid
For a lasting union
In a world gone simian
With interposing greed
Strangling the will to breed				24			
And shamecallers crush
The instincts to a hush
Whereupon the simple ways
Of the bread and water days
Wilt like the drying flowers
In the pitiful bowers
And no children laugh and play
While the dragonflies flay
Running wild in the sun
All day long having fun
In the fields of bygone days
Yearning for the old world ways			36
O bad dreams troubled night			
The angel streams candlelight
On the horror in the hands
At the crushed toad's glands
O confess man! the daily killings
Done by the demon's biddings
Of beasts and fowls digested
With not a whimper contested
By a butcher's knife beheaded
Ground fine and kneaded
Into cubes of fried nuggets
Down the customers' gullets				48
Paid with a round silver coin
To a man with others to join
To bid for a Van Gogh flower
In a glowing office tower
With a million pounds of flesh
A picture of something fresh
For the pad where he and lover
Fuck each other over and over
Gazing at the Van Gogh
Every now and then a cough
From the other room disturbs
The sexy moans and other blurbs			60
Like in the free videos
Of all those bedroom rodeos
Downloaded from the Internet
Something gets a bit wet
Outside when it rains
Down all those drains
The water still flows
He'll see again before he goes
Something he needs no more
If the thing is the very core
Of breathing and staying
The blessed angels are saying
There's mercy and as they look
It ripples on the babbling brook			74

Lucignano 21 5 2007