Attack On The Ad-Man
by A. S. J. Tessimond
This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Praising whatever he is paid to praise,
He hunts for ever-newer, smarter ways
To make the gilt seen gold; the shoddy, silk;
To cheat us legally; to bluff and bilk
By methods which no jury can prevent
Because the law’s not broken, only bent.
This mind for hire, this mental prostitute
Can tell the half-lie hardest to refute;
Knows how to hide an inconvenient fact
And when to leave a doubtful claim unbacked;
Manipulates the truth but not too much,
And if his patter needs the Human Touch,
Skillfully artless, artlessly naive,
Wears his convenient heart upon his sleeve.
He uses words that once were strong and fine,
Primal as sun and moon and bread and wine,
True, honourable, honoured, clear and keen,
And leaves them shabby, worn, diminished, mean.
He takes ideas and trains them to engage
In the long little wars big combines wage…
He keeps his logic loose, his feelings flimsy;
Turns eloquence to cant and wit to whimsy;
Trims language till it fits his clients, pattern
And style’s a glossy tart or limping slattern.
He studies our defences, finds the cracks
And where the wall is weak or worn, attacks.
lie finds the fear that’s deep, the wound that’s tender,
And mastered, outmanouevered, we surrender.
We who have tried to choose accept his choice
And tired succumb to his untiring voice.
The dripping tap makes even granite soften
We trust the brand-name we have heard so often
And join the queue of sheep that flock to buy;
We fools who know our folly, you and I.
A few random poems:
- A Lament For Adonis by Sappho
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot
- Михаил Лермонтов – Баллада (Куда так проворно, жидовка младая)
- The Cottage Hospital poem – John Betjeman poems
- Andromeda poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- One And Two by Will McKendree Carleton
- Sonnet 9: Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye by William Shakespeare
- Teenager by Patrick Connors
- Sonnet # 8 by Luis A. Estable
- September by Ted Hughes
- Creativity Tool – The Five Senses
- John Bleäke At Hwome At Night by William Barnes
- The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling
- On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer poem – John Keats poems
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Upon The Sight Of A Beautiful Picture Painted By Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart by William Wordsworth
- To The Small Celandine by William Wordsworth
- To The Poet, John Dyer by William Wordsworth
- To Sleep by William Wordsworth
- To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811 by William Wordsworth
- To Joanna by William Wordsworth
- To A Young Lady Who Had Been Reproached For Taking Long Walks In The Country by William Wordsworth
- To a Sky-Lark by William Wordsworth
- ‘Tis Said, That Some Have Died For Love by William Wordsworth
- The Vaudois by William Wordsworth
- The Two Thieves; Or, The Last Stage Of Avarice by William Wordsworth
- The Two April Mornings by William Wordsworth
- The Thorn by William Wordsworth
- The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth
- The Sun Has Long Been Set by William Wordsworth
- The Stars Are Mansions Built By Nature’s Hand by William Wordsworth
- The Sparrow’s Nest by William Wordsworth
- The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth
- The Simplon Pass by William Wordsworth
- The Shepherd, Looking Eastward, Softly Said by William Wordsworth
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond (1902 -1962) was an English poet. He had a tumultuous childhood, ran from boarding school, went to work, somehow attended the University of Liverpool, avoided service in WWI and then discovered that he is unfit for military service after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which in those days was known as manic depression. A.S. Tessimond is a wonderful poet though maybe somewhat underappreciated poet. He died from in 1962 from a brain haemorrhage.