Shouting Things

by Cliff Lake

The shouting things that surround.
A multitude of voices,
Pick your poison or your prison
From the many choices.

A rampaging beast,
It’s claws dulled through ineptitude,
Empty of substance as it has ever been,
Loudly proclaiming it’s cause,
While stripping away its own veils.

It’s minions promise protections 
That they may not secure,
And will not survive.
They huddle and plot new devices,
Flailing attempts to keep hidden the web
That they fell into out of simple greed.

These are the shouting things;
Empty lives trying for meaning
Through propping up 
The emptiest among them.

The beast lit large yet,
It’s shadow larger still,
It shouts loudest of all,
Yet for all the volume
It says no more than it ever has.
It is indeed only a larger empty.

The trapped tiger roars loudest
Just before it’s end.
The paper tiger burns brightest 
Before it is reduced to ash
And allowed to blow away in the clean wind.

The shouting things will clamor
Until their tiger is caged.
Had they learned to sing
They would have no need to shout.
But the web holds them tightly,
And so, they will shout,
Until they are cocooned 
In the lies they told.

Cliff Lake 9/16/2023
Copyright © Clifford Lake 2023