Friday Poem: "Ecce Homo (again)"

Ecce Homo
    (again)

For a lark
I defend my life:
Explain away
Its blemishes
Blaming chance
And ignorance
Circumstance
Judgment

Greater fools than I
Listen solemnly
Believe my sham
And tsk and cluck
Faithfully in all
The right places

What a curse
Here among humans
With human feelings
Always eager
For rancid regret

They haven't a notion
Of what it all means
The absence of truth
Has left them bereft

Free today
Tomorrow in chains
Prodded like cattle
Doubly beset
By bubbly freedom
Dour fate

All of a piece
To their dizzy brains
One moment they did it
They didn't the next
No feeling of friction
Or of contradiction

1/28-3/17/97, 5/11/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.