Suspect Too Much Sweet Talk

             Liberal Art
 
Suspect too much sweet talk
But never close your mind
                             (Seamus Heaney)

           Common Sense
 
  That which tells you the world is flat.
                             (Stuart Chase)
 
  The verbal world (creatura) on the
         one hand: clapping.
                  
                     @@@

"The senses deceive, sure, but so
do our brains: you can stare into
a black cup of coffee until it expands,
your tongue goes numb, eyes glaze
and you forget your name. and winters
will not be cake every year for your
birthday;

"A strange man got up close and
personal with my eyes, pouring
something cold on them. "To dilate
the pupil," he said. Once I saw a
man dislocate his arm playing volley
ball, a friend fall off his bike, mountain
top removed, cat hit on the freeway.

"I am usually guilty of no greater sin
than walking down the street when
out of the blue, accosted by some
Book of Mormon representative
asking for a moment of my time.
regressing to bibs, diapers, and
sticky fingers.

"(I hesitate to call them poems)

"When I'm frustrated, I can't get out,
born on the  other side of  vanity,
spun from reflection, dismay, and pride.

"My father is a mountain man. At death
we are as bald as birth, brains exposed
to the above, whatever it may be. The
morning crow harkens another sad,
bedraggled day in the mistaken earth.

A coward's a man with tweed suits
and spectacles. For now you are
asleep, netted as the sea. .
 
(stochastic randomizing:
amalgam of an American
Literature Basement Writers
semester.)