The Common-Folk
︎︎︎ JM Barsley
︎ June 2, 2026
I fear the mouths of the commonfolk:
I fear them like a trap.
The claptrap falling deadborn from their gums:
Old commonplaces; older dulltoothed saws
The copper gong’s dull clanging “thee”s and “thou”s:
The “how’s your mam?” and “health is wealth”; they’ve heard
Your dear nieces doing well at school,
And isn’t milk just oh so dear these days?
All the clap-trap: oh you know it’s all a trap;
In the silent glades of commonland there lurk
The man-trap’s jaws, the sudden steely snap
That sunders bonemeal, shattering a-clap...
I fear their mouths: I fear them most of all.
Let dread Charybdis gurgle in her deep,
The fen-bogs bovine-hungry in their black;
Let lions loosen bowels with their roar
Agape in bloodied uvula and teeth:
These mouths are worse.
Of course it’s never nice
When grizzly jaws come tearing through the skin
And shatter bones to pulver on their torque;
Or have each mortal morsel of your flesh
Devoured, or left as carrion to the birds—
They’re decorous and dumb enough
To leave the rest. Nor ever dare
Your peace disturb, one thought inveigh,
One syllable articulate in speech
That separates your spirit from its own.
Not like their mouths. Deft hunters, these,
With language stuffed all kindess on the tongue:
Them words is darts. Like needlepoints they sting
And keep you pinned, and wriggling in place—
And itches, too. Can’t help but pull
That barb straight from that carapace of flesh:
And show the quick, the quivering beneath:
A pinprick. Such a tiny thing, so small—
Nothing really you should bother ‘bout at all—
But they do. See, it’s their way in:
You’ve gotta give ‘em some response:
Know you’re not dumb: they well remember how
Incessantly you blathered as a child—
And bit-by-bit, they’ll burrow through the skin
And nibble, bite—a little at a time;
At first, at least. But how their bellies heave
Distended with the parasitic brood
That teeming hatches, ravenously mouth
And scurry through that self-substantial fuel
The treasure-trove and nursemaid to your soul…
Devoured. What was once your own:
Those phrases, words—such melodies they weaved
Yea symphonies—the subtlest brocades
That draped your soul in tapestries of grace—
That showed your soul when flourishing it fell
With Cato on the Tyrian sands; or went
Spelunking with Empedocles, or raved
As Ajax raved dishonoured in his flock—
The highest breeds, a lineage most rare—
But hardly meet to try and breed with theirs.
Go graft a common thistle on the rose.
Imagine all the half-breed whelps
Such pairings make; how awkwardly they’d lurch
And limp along the common soil awhile
So fancy in their fine ancestral pearls
As they scrabble with the piggies in the swill...
But oh, there's really nothing to be done.
Words breed with words, so wantonly beget
Their bastard kindred popping from the womb;
And words on words proliferate,
Bear mongrels from your thoroughbreds until
Their breeding drinks your breeding whole entire.
Like cordyceps they'll commandeer your soul;
And soon enough you'll frolick in those weeds
And mouth, yourself, those commonplaces meet
To live inside the common mealy mouths—
The mouths of them—the commonfolk.
I fear them like a trap.
The claptrap falling deadborn from their gums:
Old commonplaces; older dulltoothed saws
The copper gong’s dull clanging “thee”s and “thou”s:
The “how’s your mam?” and “health is wealth”; they’ve heard
Your dear nieces doing well at school,
And isn’t milk just oh so dear these days?
All the clap-trap: oh you know it’s all a trap;
In the silent glades of commonland there lurk
The man-trap’s jaws, the sudden steely snap
That sunders bonemeal, shattering a-clap...
I fear their mouths: I fear them most of all.
Let dread Charybdis gurgle in her deep,
The fen-bogs bovine-hungry in their black;
Let lions loosen bowels with their roar
Agape in bloodied uvula and teeth:
These mouths are worse.
Of course it’s never nice
When grizzly jaws come tearing through the skin
And shatter bones to pulver on their torque;
Or have each mortal morsel of your flesh
Devoured, or left as carrion to the birds—
They’re decorous and dumb enough
To leave the rest. Nor ever dare
Your peace disturb, one thought inveigh,
One syllable articulate in speech
That separates your spirit from its own.
Not like their mouths. Deft hunters, these,
With language stuffed all kindess on the tongue:
Them words is darts. Like needlepoints they sting
And keep you pinned, and wriggling in place—
And itches, too. Can’t help but pull
That barb straight from that carapace of flesh:
And show the quick, the quivering beneath:
A pinprick. Such a tiny thing, so small—
Nothing really you should bother ‘bout at all—
But they do. See, it’s their way in:
You’ve gotta give ‘em some response:
Know you’re not dumb: they well remember how
Incessantly you blathered as a child—
And bit-by-bit, they’ll burrow through the skin
And nibble, bite—a little at a time;
At first, at least. But how their bellies heave
Distended with the parasitic brood
That teeming hatches, ravenously mouth
And scurry through that self-substantial fuel
The treasure-trove and nursemaid to your soul…
Devoured. What was once your own:
Those phrases, words—such melodies they weaved
Yea symphonies—the subtlest brocades
That draped your soul in tapestries of grace—
That showed your soul when flourishing it fell
With Cato on the Tyrian sands; or went
Spelunking with Empedocles, or raved
As Ajax raved dishonoured in his flock—
The highest breeds, a lineage most rare—
But hardly meet to try and breed with theirs.
Go graft a common thistle on the rose.
Imagine all the half-breed whelps
Such pairings make; how awkwardly they’d lurch
And limp along the common soil awhile
So fancy in their fine ancestral pearls
As they scrabble with the piggies in the swill...
But oh, there's really nothing to be done.
Words breed with words, so wantonly beget
Their bastard kindred popping from the womb;
And words on words proliferate,
Bear mongrels from your thoroughbreds until
Their breeding drinks your breeding whole entire.
Like cordyceps they'll commandeer your soul;
And soon enough you'll frolick in those weeds
And mouth, yourself, those commonplaces meet
To live inside the common mealy mouths—
The mouths of them—the commonfolk.