Fedallah's Hearse

(album: Potemkin City Limits - 2005)

As so many practiced diplomats,
So too your vaunted laureates,
Whose access to the higher rungs
Of a cultural priesthood is hinged upon
Their flat for sophistry.

Well, I vote you the best equipped
To shrink from speech that might suggest
Any thoughts your key target-market might
Not have already signed-off on and ratified.

And I vote you most likely to
Clutter your language with
So much deadwood that no
Amount of pruning will reveal
Your intensive, protracted

Campaign of saying
Nothing at all.
Your daydreams
Of black tie affairs at Rideau Hall.
Your acceptance speech.
Your dramatic pause.

Don't forget to thank those
Bitter ex-musicians cum embedded
Rock-journalists frantically applauding
The latest artist-formerly-known-as
Iconoclast, giddy from the fumes of a fresh detection,
Moping to the maudlin beat of a hat rack rhythm section,
A tacit understanding of mutual non-aggression
Enjoyed by every nauseating do-nothing functionary.

Really, it's not so much the incessant ruse of
Assigning profound meaning to the meaningless
Curios you decorate your sets with in
Your extraordinarily mundane fictions.

It's the arrogance of the subtext:

The province of human affairs
Is a field best left
To dilettantes with an extraordinary gift
For feigning of paralysis.

For saying nothing at all.
For daydreams
Of black tie affairs at Rideau Hall.
An acceptance speech.
Sustained applause.