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