The Incarcerated Word



What was created to expose
  is now a fortress just to hide

A bastion of higher learning
  within a haven safe for lies

Where discourse once was treasured
  the ivy droops and sighs

With comfort their true measure,
  the dilettantes still cry

Plato is disgusted,
  John Locke is more than riled

As a millennia of learning
  is mocked in false denial

Students weak and wounded
  from those lessons never learned

Their tomorrow’s but a doomsday
  their futures sure to burn

Those words were there to save them
  both the hated and revered

All truth in dialectics
  —now abandoned by their fear

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)
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Submitted by KurtPhilipBehm on June 29, 2018

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
20

Quick analysis:

Scheme AX BC XC XX DX BX DX XX XX AX X
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 613
Words 105
Stanzas 11
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1

Kurt Philip Behm

Longtime writer with twelve books in publication. Three of them Poetry. : The Death Of The Playground : The Sword Of Ichiban : Searching For Crazy Horse : Darkening Sun : An Anthology Of Perception-Vol's 1 & 2 : After Midnight : Sammy And Bumpers : The Fall City Mandate : Revenge Along The War Trail : Death from The Sky more…

All Kurt Philip Behm poems | Kurt Philip Behm Books

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    "The Incarcerated Word" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/47176/the-incarcerated-word>.

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