1.Click on the cross
to enlarge this image—
Black gold,
a nice chunk of change.
W
arrogance makes you see
W snicker, swagger,
jog with Judas
over Jesus.
Cover a prairie with lies.
W
back in the day
your dad wined and dined
Saddam.
We didn’t know him
from Adam or Satan.
Now the Evil One’s
sprung from his Armageddon-
subsistence on Mars bars
and Spam.
2.Posture to the pastor,
lick your lips and fib:
axe, bamboozle, connive, doctor, erase,
flimflam, grandstand, hyperventilate,
impinge, jinx, kink, lisp, misspeak, nullify,
obscure, prevaricate, quash, rehash,
slander, trash, undermine, vandalize,
warp, x-ray, yammer, zap
Lies: white collar, red-handed,
blue-in-the-face, apple pie,
pants-on-fire, wool-pulled-over,
Bible-libel.
That way madness lies.
Love-lies-bleeding in the garden.
Lie down with the dog, rise with the fleas.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Mendacity, mendacity—
Mend a city
or there’s no sky left behind.
Based in rural Vermont since 1968, Verandah Porche has published The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career. She has written poems and songs to accompany her community through a generation of moments and milestones. As a teacher and facilitator, she has created collaborative writing projects in schools and nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Her work has been featured on NPR’s “Artbeat,” on public radio stations around New England and in the Vermont State House. The Vermont Arts Council awarded her a Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life in 1998, and a recent grant to support the preparation of poetry for publication and performance.