The passive voice conceals the person acting;
Who else does it hide?
Were verbal choices more exacting,
We’d hear the composed disclose their tactics:
The voice of malefactors forced to confide.
The passive’s hidden by the sufferer;
What else is hid by him?
Grammar prevaricating like a bluffer,
Smothered by verbosity and dry whim.
Against finality, as if there were a buffer,
As if a verb were flippant, not invidious,
Use active voice to evade the insipid as
The mouth grows weak, the breath comes rougher.
Goers and goners, prey and predator pivot;
Usages peal, and exhortations rife chime
On how to be alive in one’s lifetime;
But life is lived unless you live it.