On Deaf Ears

A lost apostrophe's
Come all adrift
Suspended in mid-sentence
So the sense is all skew-whiff
And nobody's listening now

The art of persuasion
Sifting fiction from fact
Diversion, smoke and mirrors
It's all part of the act
So no-one's really listening
In the audience
Time will tell
Just how much is soft soap
And how much hard sell

In the audience
The five minute bell
Toils underwater
This won't end up well

Here's the one-trick pony
With all the gift of the gab
You never know the worth of what you have

He's sold his stock of baloney
Giving it one final stab
He never entertained the slightest doubt
You never know when time is running out

The words are falling on deaf ears
All sense and meaning disappear
No language of precision lasts in these declining years

A breath I've been holding in
A pregnancy of pause
A phantom punctuation
In an inconclusive clause...
Well, nobody's listening now

You put the words together, no-one's listening now
They clap their hands together, no-one's listening now