Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back poet Maureen Tolman Flannery, who joined us as part of the P2 Collective in “Space” and returned for “Family.” This time, she brings us two poems confronting volatile and destructive elements of “Audacity.”
“Age Inappropriate” traces the unsettling persistence of predatory behavior in a man with dementia whose appetites remain disturbingly intact. Though his language has eroded and his cognition falters, the fire of his audacity does not. He continues to ogle and paw at young women who draw his eye, unaware that the dandy he believes himself to be is a pitiable and clownish figure. Maureen’s punchy alliterative rhythm conveys this, spooling forward with a surly bounce.
“With license of longevity, restraint/ dissipates, innuendo inserts into each/ interaction. He flirts where interest// is least likely to be returned/ and pays no mind to rebuke./ Dementia merely augments desire.”
The poem refuses to sentimentalize decline. Instead, it exposes how audacity rooted in entitlement and chauvinism can persist long after dignity, clarity, and accountability have vanished. This dirty old man is not a trope, but points to moral failing below conscious thought, an instinctive compulsion that flares even as the mind dims.
“Inspection” is a biting commentary on bureaucracy and the intrusion of the state into the essential creative life of the individual. In this dystopian vision those who govern are not interested in values or meaning. They seek deviations, the small, human irregularities that mark individuality, so they may punish them. Here, audacity belongs to the state: the brazen presumption that it may enter the private sanctum of human aspiration and assert its dominance.
“They do not ask you what matters//or by what standards you have governed your life./ They are looking for ways your aspirations/ are non-compliant with an untranslated phrase/ on an obscure page—and they will find them.”
Maureen’s poetic voice contains Orwellian echoes and lands with the ominous force of myth realized. This is not allegory. The imagery is grounded and relatable while at the same time full of archetypal resonance, illuminating a reality that operates, in varying degree, in governments across the world every day.
Both poems remind us that audacity is not inherently heroic or beneficial. It can also be a mask for moral rot and the hunger to dominate, a volatile flame that spreads wherever motives go unexamined.
Read “Age Inappropriate” and “Inspection” in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Born and raised in Dire Amazement, Maureen Flannery spent her youth in the tutelage of eccentrics blissfully disregarding regulations. She attended the School of Suspended Incredulity where she earned her degree in singular being with a minor in defiance. She moved to Amplified Ambitions where she apprenticed with a peace-monger and a crafter of fine lives. She now teaches attention to the perpetually aghast. She has conducted a life of inventive non-compliance and maintains a steadfast devotion to trees and people clinging to the edge. Her poems have appeared in Slush Piles, Hearts of Children, Bedside Tables, Circular Files, Mountain Meadows, and Unmitigated Bafflement.