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:
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “Irish Melodies”. 58. Farewell! – But Whenever You Welcome the Hour. Томас Мур.
- The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
- dreams the wind by Steve Troyanovich
- The Forsaken poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Form Of Women by Robert Creely
- The Song Of The Old Mother by William Butler Yeats
- Couplet 10 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- At Sea
- Sparkles from The Wheel. by Walt Whitman
- Stars Over The Dordogne by Sylvia Plath
- A Hand-Mirror. by Walt Whitman
- Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force, be it not said by William Shakespeare
- Robert Burns: Out Over The Forth:
- Buddha’s Laugh by Sonya Ki Tomlinson
- Composed By The Side Of Grasmere Lake 1806 by William Wordsworth
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
- Love Sonnet X poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet LX poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet LVIII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Girl-Gladness poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Fortune poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Elegy On An Australian Schoolboy poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Books poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XLV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- Love Sonnet XXV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- Love Sonnet LIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- You’re The Only One poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- Victims poem – Yaseen Anwer poems | Poetry Monster
- The Senses of Art poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- The Details Are poem – Zhivka Baltadzhieva poems | Poetry Monster
- The 9th Inning poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- Songs of Depression poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- Someone left a pen… poem – Yuyutsu Sharma poems | Poetry Monster
- Some Singers And Their Traits poem – Ygor Noblott poems | Poetry Monster
- Sin poem – Yao Ying poems | Poetry Monster
- Sabbath, My Love poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
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.