5. Ode to the Corrupt Journalists
By JH Sayyar
1
O thou, whose ink is venom, tongue a blade,
Masked in the garb of truth, yet truth betrayed,
Apollo weeps to see thy laurel fade
Once golden, now a crown of horned lies
Thine argent quill, once dipped in morning's hue,
Now draws its script from gutters foul and sly,
Where rumor festers and the mold runs through,
And facts lie strangled beneath a headline’s cry.
What banquet dost thou spread—O shameful scribe!
But poisoned scrolls for profit and for bribe?
2
O Muse! Thou fled the room when he first wrote,
For beauty shrinks where cunning takes the stage
No Nightingale with truth’s eternal throat
Shall warble in his columns, cage, or page
He courts the mob with honeyed, crafted sound
A sycophant to power's golden tongue
His words are daggers sheathed in dulcet sound,
And with them, many an honest soul is stung.
Yet see! He smiles, as serpents smile in sleep,
While cities burn for stories he would keep.
3
What gods inspire such penmanship of rot?
Not Clio nor the noble Muses nine,
But Mammon, grinning in a smoke-wreathed cot,
Pours molten gold into his chaliced wine
He calls it freedom, names it people's right,
But traffics truth like coin on crooked scales
No beacon in the storm, no guiding light,
Just flashing ink where fading honor pales.
How soft he speaks, yet how he sells his soul
To keep the hand that feeds him in control.
4
Oft have I seen him stalk the palace door
With lips well-oiled and conscience thin as air,
To twist the tale, to dress the open sore,
And swear the wound was never truly there.
He sings of virtue, justice, sacred things,
While dancing round the altar of deceit;
His truth wears chains, virtue bears no wings
They perish where his clever phrases meet.
A poet once sought Beauty, Truth as one;
This bard sees both shoots them with his gun.
5
Yet still, within thy ink-blot soul, I spy
The ghost of what thy calling could have been:
A voice to lift, a fire to clarify,
A mirror polished, not a smoke-screened sheen.
Return, if ever thou canst yet return,
To honor's gate, though ivy-choked and dim
Let thy false laurels into cinders burn,
And rise once more to write what is not grim.
But till that dawn, thy name shall cursed be,
Etched on the tombstone of integrity
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