04-15-2017, 08:28 AM
Scare City
What scares me less than heights or blades
but more than loaded firearms
that hidden, sick unsafety net:
my fear of self-discovery.
To be a poseur’s not so bad
when everyone is buffaloed
by facile tricks and bafflegab
vocabulary well-deployed
and phony plausibility
all masking inexperience
and barely third-rate intellect
a copyist, an insincere
un-armied strutting generalist.
See, trouble rises not when word
gets out that he’s an idiot
knows nought of any subject that
he lectures on or writes about -
that his experience was not
in front-lines, only garrisons:
that’s fine when winks and giggles hide
behind my back, or hands, or sound
in other rooms. Their disrespect
is earned but never obvious.
No, what scares me is facing up
to being forced to understand
I wasn’t just a fool to pose
as something more than what I am
but dumb enough to truly think
I had them fooled at any time!
What scares me less than heights or blades
but more than loaded firearms
that hidden, sick unsafety net:
my fear of self-discovery.
To be a poseur’s not so bad
when everyone is buffaloed
by facile tricks and bafflegab
vocabulary well-deployed
and phony plausibility
all masking inexperience
and barely third-rate intellect
a copyist, an insincere
un-armied strutting generalist.
See, trouble rises not when word
gets out that he’s an idiot
knows nought of any subject that
he lectures on or writes about -
that his experience was not
in front-lines, only garrisons:
that’s fine when winks and giggles hide
behind my back, or hands, or sound
in other rooms. Their disrespect
is earned but never obvious.
No, what scares me is facing up
to being forced to understand
I wasn’t just a fool to pose
as something more than what I am
but dumb enough to truly think
I had them fooled at any time!
Non-practicing atheist