Prose Header

Once Folly Starts

by Michael Murry

Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.
The perpetrators of the crime command:
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

Their troubled foreheads wrinkles deeply crease
With consequences that they never planned.
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

No logic brings intelligent release.
The unforced errors earn no reprimand.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The mounting costs leave few sheep fit to fleece.
Who next will pay the ransom on demand?
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

Yet still the sophists ladle on the grease:
Those ancient fallacies the flames have fanned.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The lies add up in thousands dead apiece,
Questions are begged, both trivial and bland.
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease?
More dying, please? We can’t afford the peace?


“A Vicious Circle Villanelle” in The Misfortune Teller, 2008.
After the style of Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

Copyright © 2008, 2022 by Michael Murry

Proceed to Challenge 972...

`

Home Page