You can lead a steed to water
but you cannot make it drink —
a testament to nonconformist beasts!
How strange it is that
(horses notwithstanding)
you can steer a human being
to the hugest pile of bullshit
and
regardless of the stench
the whole decaying heap
whatever the expense
will be by her devoured
 
[Obiter Dictum:
For those with sensibilities
to sexism in words
you'll notice that I spoke of "her"
in reference to the turd.
That doesn't mean I view
the femme
as more susceptible
to eating shit than
any man.
It was simply to avoid
the charge that
putting "him" instead of "her"
would mean that I regard the world
a male domain rather than
the matriarchy
that it clearly has become
or I would never even think
to put this juggernaut insert
into the heart
of an otherwise serious
admittedly mysterious
even elegiac
train of verse]
 
Returning to the poem at hand…
A famous sailor once did cry,
when scanning through his looking-glass,
"I see no ship!"
to make sure that his orders
(like the aforementioned mounts)
could be blithely disobeyed.
A strange familiarity
pervades my head
with thoughts of
woolly-minded folk instead:
The feral flock of sheople
which bleats so loud today
look through their broken telescopes
with clouded eyes and say
“I see no shit!” — but not so they
may contravene
the lawlessness which poses as
democracy
but rather so that they
may pointedly maintain
the fossil frown
of the status quo
and also so that they
may righteously refrain
from wasting (as it seems to them)
[the ennui of] their precious time.
Anything!
rather than they exercise
the rusty unused nerves
of their crusty languid minds.
 
I dread the day (there's nothing more I fear)
when I will be judged by a so-called
jury of my peers —
by those who bow and scrape and fawn
before those 'to the manor born' —
by those who think the world is pink
with ribbons, rose and baby blue —
who call realism pessimism
and think that Truth has no virtue —
who scoff at sceptics of all media news:
believing everything they're told,
disinformation shapes their views —
make jibes at square pegs in round holes
(they have as much discernment
as a row of disused telegraph poles) —
who so refuse to spy a flagrant hoax
when shown the scared-stiff pupils of its eyes
for fear that it will crumble all they've known
while wilfully accepting barefaced lies.
 
To those who claim my tone is one of
scornful dissonance
I say that there is no worse thing than
wilful ignorance