Twice shy

AGENT offers me a no-
FRILLS contract. Feel
BLEAK, suspect something
SNAKY about this deal.

Words should have been: AGENT BLEAT FRILL SNAKY (!) – hence the following second attempt:

How can I experience the FRILL
Of the circus? Here comes A GENT
To make my hair rise and my voice BLEAT:
‘Learn to pronounce “thrill” first, you flaky-SNAKY!’

Art’s Beginning

‘BEVEL out stone’s jagged edge’-thought which perhaps
BEGAT art’s momentum, smoothing sharpness from the hunt to other use.
BRAIN stitching connections beyond subsistence:
EARTH a stage, a mirror, a canvas, a manifold of signs.

Sleeper

AGENT in place, sembling normal life, chameleon morphed to background,
SNAKY intentions slumbering, no sly arguments about good and evil,
FRILLs of markets instead, keeping up with the Joneses on gadgets and cars.
BLEAT on, those fools around him. Agent waits and hides grim smile.

Funk

‘The
LARGE skunk drunk on the lawn under the
SLANTED tree trunk
STUNK!’ ‘Well, you junk-head hunk of a
NINNY, what would you expect? Has your punk brain shrunk?’

Fatal to the Footwear

LARGE brackish pond, once stepped into, having
STUNK something fierce, made me wonder how to tell it
SLANT for polished recollection, but it’s just tale of
NINNY who stepped in it and later threw out his shoes.

Bilge

EXACTly how you can say one
GLEAM of the sun’s ray
TODAY counts as a sunny day. It’s
BILGE, your brain has gone astray.