Tag Archives: lies

Good Grief: rimas dissolutas

Good grief! What else did you expect?
A world set suddenly to rights,
some glibly promised golden dawn,
rough places sanded down to plain,
and milk and honey handed out
to both devout and infidel?

Instead, you got a fresh train wreck:
horrific days and sleepless nights,
with conflict that just lingers on
and brings no joy at all, just pain.
Why such surprise when people shout
and damn your policies to hell?

My God! Did you expect a prize
for proudly showing ignorance
of what it means to “keep it real”
or silent, suffer in the dark
while your parade glides loudly by
and celebrates your privilege?

And even now, with “opened” eyes,
you make clumsy attempts to dance,
pretending you can still appeal
to those who see you as a shark.
You’re blind to even your own lies
but still call protest sacrilege.

28 APR 2017

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All Possible: a poem of lies

The sky above is never blue,
the earth is flat as pie,
youth is eternal in the world
and villains never cry.
True riches can be hoarded,
real pain fades by and by,
belief is always justified
and nothing good will die.
The truth in this is plain to see:
so long as I am never me.

16 APR 2014

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U.G.

In English, it sounds just the same:
a senseless string of words
embued with some sense of mystique
used to convince and tame you;
to teach you follow and not lead;
that first impulse is evil.
If what you seek you have right now,
then why the mad gyrations,
austerities, and endless rules
to curb now’s inclinations?

What higher purpose would you serve
that others claim is worthy?
A thousand saints are born and die
each day, and yet it makes no difference:
if an altered state of mind
could change the world,
it would be changed by now.

Who has convinced you that the truth
is out there for the finding?
If they possessed an ounce or two,
what good is that to you?
They are no different, save for this:
when someone gave them manna
they asked after the recipe
and did not stay for dinner.

What meal can satisfy your urge
that has no form or substance?
What is the point of starving, then,
to merely birth a vision?

The gods, if they exist at all,
have no need of your mantras;
they will enlighten who they will.
Your efforts make no difference.
In that case, why expect reward?
Instead, just go on living
as if this one was all you had;
and nothing will be missing.

31 JUL 2006

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The hands that write these words tell lies

The hands that write these words tell lies;
their range of symbols does not jibe
with the instructions they receive
and must translate from eye and ear
through circuits fixed through years of use
to see and hear in certain ways.

When Henry Miller said the thought
that finds the paper is transformed
from its first impulse, pure and strong,
into mere shadow of itself
he was not wrong; and yet, not all
of thought’s initial pulse is lost.

Its shape is change and often blurred,
the leading edge may lose its keen;
a rock may evolve to a bird, almost,
or mutate somewhere in between.

The hands that write these words tell lies;
they cannot speak so clear and plain
without a whisper of complaint
against the mind that bids them work.

Perhaps they think to self-preserve,
in fear that should they speak the truth.
The frequencies they might proscribe
could be those suited to destroy
the mechanism’s source itself;
what good a printed manual then,
with no mechanic, or machine?

28 May 2005

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The Shelter of Righteousness

What good was in the world has gone,
if we proclaim, with innocence,
that justice has escaped our grasp,
while our hands show no sign of fight
and, at the end of stiffened arms
held at our sides, are soft and smooth.

And if those cloaks with which we hide
ourselves from other seeking eyes
do not after long years of wear
reveal at least a trace of mud,
perhaps it does no good to claim
our journey long and filled with strife.

Our eyes, that show no signs of stress
from endless nights by candle flame,
but still reflect an inner calm,
their focus fixed upon ourselves —
how dare we claim to see the prize
that others seek as merely dross.

With honeyed tongues, we speak of pain
as if it were a passing whim;
and would say it miraculous,
an intervention of the gods,
that our great struggle for the right
to live as we choose has found its end.

How smug and righteous we’ve become,
to think the universe so small
that it will measure its success
by how our fickle fortunes fall.
If we would claim all but us wrong,
what good was in the world has gone.

05 FEB 2005

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