Threefold

            I am the ventriloquist,
                        and with a crawling hand,
                        I trap my wrist firm in the clutter.
You only exist to collapse.
                        Relying on the maw of the machine
                        to mutter lies or perhaps –
Pursue the truth off screen.
         


             I am the ventriloquist,
                        and this puppet speaks in my stead,
                        it shapes at will the light break-through,
                        as a movable window that cynically wavers,
                        noise that wastes into grey hue.
 I wonder about my flavor...
 Is it metal, am I tasteless too?
         


               I am the ventriloquist,
                        sovereign of the xeric voice –   
            Coeval of the second decadence,
            allow me to heave the captive silence,
            sunder naïve labels apart and vow
  to smother this feint notion
  that we are slaves
  of murals we did not help paint;
  That we are pests
  under the restraint of a web;
  That we are waves
  born late at the ebb of a tide.     

The ventriloquist and his dummy (2000). Mike Parr & John Loane.