frame any lie no matter how shameful, how demeaning, how absurd,
and there is someone who would leap at the opportunity to tell it --
who would love the lie for its own sake, climb any rooftop to yell it,
to sell it, tickled to death with their own clever twisting of words,
fabrication of evidence, murder of witnesses -- you can almost smell it,
the sweat of the buzz they get, goosing the credulous herd.
name any offence no matter how bizarre, how repulsive, how obscene,
and there is someone who would not have to be paid much to commit it,
who seeing a cringeing dog or a weeping child is inclined to hit it,
kick it, make it yelp louder. whatever is contemptuous and mean,
there is someone yearning for an excuse to do it. torturers admit it;
they enjoy their work. and it gets a grip like nicotine.
name any privilege no matter how absurd, how excessive, how extreme,
and there is someone from whose cold dead hands you'd have to pry it.
someone who will coolly spend another's life to buy it,
pry it from charred fingers, smash the bottle for the cream;
gobble the last cookie from the jar and all the while deny it,
lost in the dream of entitlement, the seductive lethal dream.
-- GPL Jun 2006 D. A. Clarke