Fake Jive

It's just a painting, it's just a song,
wonderous plate, miraculous rag on
holding the promise of happiness high,
beauteous speck in a dilated eye,
O you draw yourself a little leaner
and you sing like somebody meaner than you are, don't you tiger
of paper? A many false windowed thing,
A kite in a lecturing wind
awaiting intellectual strike, cast the pens down in the dome tonight.
Have you read the poets lately?
They don't get a weekly, monthly, bi-annual,
Now you may cry but I doubt you will.

Ten years is all it took, ten years in thrall to a lickspittle crook,
now you don't know the crooked lay of the land,
you don't trust any man to shake your hand without
taking a thumb or a finger,
how the vilest scent will linger while the sweetest
pass away so swiftly.
On this patriot day sound the national band,
sweep the plain you sunburnt and bland,
And I'll pollute the perfect stanza for music
in a deft show of hubris unplanned,
Hitch a skiff with a dusky daughter,
sail down a river of grey water musics,
Keeping the drain alive with all this fake jive.

Life is a painting, life is a song, it holds the promise of happiness.
I could tell you where it goes wrong
as good as tell you why the longing long,
you the poor painter, average singer,
maybe you never went through the ringer enough,
or loved it so you came out wrung.
Like a cracked bell I continue to tell
the same sad tale and toll all my failures to hold any note
or I quaver and cast about for the bluest port
in a black and white storm,
O I've got lots of advice, never listen to any advice,
be a pole, hoist your own flaming petard,
and when you blow, blow hard.