Thursday, December 29, 2016

Kit Kelen #364 - truth


364
truth

where does a thing
like this start?

sometimes heard faroff
like a mumbling, an earthquake
truth keeps telling itself
to anyone who will listen
it has been bad mouthed as gossip, as hearsay
some say so much hot air

you see how irony begins there?
though philosophers say no

truth has that first light shine
and it comes to me in dreams
done as a symphony
you might not quite catch

mostly we're in too much of a hurry
often we'll settle for fact
like the weather's around
but how do you know?

truth never visits
you can call
your card's to flame
on the tray –
that's meaning

meanwhile cap in hand
all comers are announced
it can be laid on with a trowel

let us not speak of the exiles
truth travels on a Nansen passport
comes to the New World
works long shifts
learns the hard way
belief doesn't pay
you have to spend your whole life saving
just for one wafer thin camel's back straw

you see that sweat on the brow?
truth is often lost for words
and words have died for it
so many mangled beyond repair
drowned in music often

when a truth goes down
the captain's singing
how often are we as simple as that?

there's the truth that's inside out
world upside down
so shhhh

have honed it to a blade to cut
brought to a point to stab

the truth is dagger to my heart

books have been filled with the stuff
and it burns

it's cumulus and strato-nimbus
truth is a falling star
go catch!

and fallen
and where was it buried?
who'll dig?

how often in the mirror winks
hold it up – see every face
truth crawls all over your skin
and it's innids too
truth is in the ointment, swims
it washes up

the sun shone on it once
but now the truth's a winter's tale
the truth is in a parlous state

deep in a drift it lies
preserved like mammoth meat

a question mark of finest cloth
embroidered with distraction

some fools see it unadorned
they have long prophet beards
go thirsty
they make a wilderness of it
but sure to count the days, the nights

it's high up on the judgement seat
it's hymen to foreskin
by bishop and actress
king's knight five to raw prawn

days when it's bung
there's still libation
might bring back to life

is there a pinnacle?
if so under the global doubt wash

do you think it came down in the last shower?
some of us pray for a flood of the stuff
I've kept the wool over my eyes

the light on the hill was grisly and grim
(that's a firm of solicitors)

the sabre-toothed truth in a jungle of filing
has everyone up for corruption
piranhas will have off that paw in the river
soon as snifter sip
truth is we're going down

in spidery writing
and in lines between
you'll need to get it right side up

there is the steadying truth
good as cuddles
when you get up too fast

the terrible truth is skindeep for sure
you feel that kind of thing in your bones

I scratch down here and there where I can
but the truth just itches more

it falls to me to glimmer at times

the truth is up to its old tricks
or is the heart not had at all

and armpits up to
wash off in it

the truth enslaves
you slaver over
once you've had a taste of it

the bitter one
or one truth's better
one truth's ahead by a nose
first past the post
or preferential

some certain truth was sent away
another here was guessed

does the head spin
or is it the world?

I can't stand a secret
tell me the truth

is it every bird sings gospel?
it's as the sun held up through branches

it often comes down to less than a name
some stray deictic
singular, plural
whatever the case
may be

I have been dizzy with it
in denial
here's the ghost
that walks
with me

it is a book of friends to end well

in the house grown over
you think to hack back to
but truth is green and flowering
truth is the aching frame
the centuries of gnarl
through which the sap
still rises 



 







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