Steamrollers

Not an ear to lend,
For mouths gotta motor,
Lest the verbal juggernauts
Spare a soul.
It's all about ego:
Every lull in the convo
Where the shy third party
Senses a breach,
He makes his move;
It's insufficient. Five syllables in,
The engine roars,
Alive again and belching fumes,
A miasma of self: the petty bits,
The tiny slights and tired feet,
The one-penny, two-penny wail of life.
Get out of the way, or you'll be crushed!
Now another revs up
And bellows back her woes-are-me;
A duet of erupters, devastators,
Voracious grinders of innocent toads,
Masticators of pulp and pap,
An anti-heroic Wagnerian dream.
As the guests trickle in, the din's compounded,
Each loudspeaking cynosure for itself,
More whines from squeaky wheels and axles,
The gratings of gears and gnashings of teeth.
No rhetorical axe is sharp enough
To wedge a word in edge- or hedge-wise,
The sonic barrier's too thick
And constantly reinvigorated
With tales retold a thousand times,
So stale and insignificant,
Yet piled like cowpats to the skies--
Some pimples here and nosehairs there--
A mighty fortress is our grit!
The shy third party can only listen
And answer with platitudes when asked,
"What's new with you?"
"Oh, not too much."
Such feeble flutters
Are lost in the clamor of thunderous bruits.