Parroting the Party Line
i. The Chorus of Consensus
—a triolet
The talking heads squawk on and on.
From dawn the hawks and parrots pound.
They harp and hammer—LOUD and l o n g.
The talking heads squawk on and on.
They shape the sheep—a spellbound throng
Ensorcelled by the ceaseless sound.
The talking heads squawk on and on.
Till dusk the hawks and parrots hound.
ii. By Any Other Name
—a villanelle
A pangolin is not a parakeet.
A fib won’t force a fact to fade away.
A lie when labelled truth is still deceit.
Veracity will not admit defeat—
In spite of what the gassy gurus say
A platypus is not a parakeet.
The eggheads scramble brains until they’re beat.
The mobs and movers spar and spin and sway.
A lie when labelled truth is still deceit.
An ear of wheat is not a sugar beet.
A pumpkin pie is not a peach parfait.
A pugapoo is not a parakeet.
Beware the wily, woolly wolves who bleat
That cockatoos were shih tzus yesterday.
A lie when labelled truth is still deceit.
I’ve told the flustered flocks on Cuckoo Street
A parakeet will never be a jay.
A lie when labelled truth is still deceit.
A parakeet is but a parakeet.
The Granny Sanitizer
—for a utopian cyber experience
Put polished parlance in Gran’s loutish mouth.
Let joyous jargon grace audacious lips.
Stop gutter gab from plunging further south.
Curtail her torrid tongue before it slips.
Immerse her salt in syrup. Halt the spread
Of stinging lingo—minimize her bark.
Stem snippy tides of sass you’ve come to dread.
Ditch rebel rants, too stoic and too stark.
Each time your silver zoomer looms to greet
The grandkids with a brazen-boomer view,
Click sanitize—make candor obsolete
With tech-corrected chat of rosy hue.
Zap bold and bitter patter with our app.
This brave new world won’t sanction Granny’s yap.
Susan Jarvis Bryant is a poet originally from the U.K., now living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
Your humorous treatment of important truth is always refreshing, Susan! I love villanelles; but I really love this villanelle’s variations on the parakeet lines; they make the poem not completely predictable.
One word: Brilliant!
Okay a few more… as always!
Very enjoyable poems as always Susan, thank you. The still life with bird and fruit is really awesome too I might add.
‘Parroting the Party Line’ targets close to all of mainstream media, as well as 85% of Congress & the Senate. Bullseye!
‘By Any Other Name’ zeros in on the propagandical deceptivity of the same political ilk, including the nation’s countless bureaucracies. Again – Bullseye!
‘The Granny Sanitizer’ brings to mind a phrase many of us hear far too often when our young ones blindside us with an extremely nasty word or comment – that being: “Where do they get this crap?” There’s a ‘Granny’ in Texas that I know will never be either sanctioned OR sanitized, bless her heart! 🙂
3 dandies, Susan –
Wow! Three really zinging and articulate poems!
“The Chorus of Consensus” has one of those very direct and unmistakable titles that explain everything you need to know about a poem before your read the first line. As soon as I started, I could follow the poem with absolute ease through every perfectly chiselled verse. That kind of direct title is useful when writing a triolet, which is so compact.
“By Any Other Name” is a menagerie of strange fauna, and it uses its comic vocabulary to make a very solid point: lies are not truth, and unreality is not reality. The repetends (suitably varied) hit us with negations, which is what we really need today in a world where millions of persons live in self-constructed bubbles of fantasy and ideology.
“The Granny Sanitizer” is a piece that immediately forces the reader to ask a question: are we dealing here with a fictional grandmother, or a real one? My first guess was the second option, because the speaker’s voice in this poem is very angry and personal, and because the speaker mentions a visit via Zoom, and specifically refers to the Granny as a “boomer.” If I’m correct, then this Granny is one helluva tough old bird! She’s loutish, audacious, torrid, speaks gutter gab along with stinging lingo, rebel rants, barks, bitter patter, and yap. Good grief, who is this formidable old lady?
But then I thought “Perhaps this is a satirical comment on how modern parents are terrified that grandparents will corrupt a modern child — maybe with bad language, or embarrassing opinions, or their freedom of speech and thought, or anything else that doesn’t fit into a ‘utopian’ paradigm of proper and acceptable behavior.” This seems the better reading, in line with what appear to be clear satiric markers: “sanitize,” “candor, “tech-corrected,” and “brave new world.” If this is the case then we have a speaker who is an obnoxious woke modern mother, worried that her kid will be corrupted by Granny’s obsolete and disreputable ways of thinking and speaking.
I’m thankful I knew all four of my grandparents very well. They vaccinated me against the poisons of modernity.
These are three inspired satirical poems that contain as much truth as they do candor in a humorous fashion that tickles the senses. I laughed the most at “a platypus is not a parakeet.” For some reason that hit my funny bone.
I loved these, and I’ll take a dozen of them dipped in white chocolate. I won’t try to explain all the clever telling things the author has done here, because anyone who can read should be able to understand this for himself. The author is the ultimate aural pastry chef.
You make it seem so effortless, Susan. I’ve nothing else to say, except that I don’t know how you do it.
Susan, how astonishing!
These were all fantastic. I only had to look up 1 word which this time (ensorcelled). There’s so much to comment on, but repeating that a lie is always a lie, even when told by yammering eggheads, really struck me. We need truth tellers like you to do the ensorcling (not sure if that’s an appropriate use of the word i just learned).