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| Photograph by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia |
August 3, 2011; revised July 8, 2015
1
Words claw
phrases hammer
mangled kludge
of tangled logic,
cause confused with what comes
next. Opinion
masters manufacture packaged sets
they call effects
to satisfy firm made-up minds
which mine and sift
their facts to fit false
premises that promise life,
pin narratives to archetypes
while inconvenient, unloved facts
cold chiseled from empirical truth lie
shattered, scattered, swept aside,
rank losers in the fight of memes,
just dirty shards that never fit
on golden statues. Awkward
facts are rude debris
about the base of carved-thought idols
blessed by masses, washed in clamor. Worship
or be swept away.
2
Weary, swept away
I cry: release me
from insistent tides,
let shifting currents loose their grip
and beach me on a bed of shards
aside a sunny side-stream bar
my toes to torrents rushing by
while straining treasure from debris –
the rare insight, the common joy
alike bear meaning yet to be
discerned, invented, argue
which, but truth transcends
our categoricals, colors
past our careful lines, it binds
new bars where downstream dreamers
contemplate just what will be. From
ruins of our worshipped ways we’ll
never see those new worlds rising
on foundations built from idols
shattered, ground,
reconstituted,
bound to truth
by stubborn facts
that would not wash away.
Words claw
phrases hammer
mangled kludge
of tangled logic,
cause confused with what comes
next. Opinion
masters manufacture packaged sets
they call effects
to satisfy firm made-up minds
which mine and sift
their facts to fit false
premises that promise life,
pin narratives to archetypes
while inconvenient, unloved facts
cold chiseled from empirical truth lie
shattered, scattered, swept aside,
rank losers in the fight of memes,
just dirty shards that never fit
on golden statues. Awkward
facts are rude debris
about the base of carved-thought idols
blessed by masses, washed in clamor. Worship
or be swept away.
2
Weary, swept away
I cry: release me
from insistent tides,
let shifting currents loose their grip
and beach me on a bed of shards
aside a sunny side-stream bar
my toes to torrents rushing by
while straining treasure from debris –
the rare insight, the common joy
alike bear meaning yet to be
discerned, invented, argue
which, but truth transcends
our categoricals, colors
past our careful lines, it binds
new bars where downstream dreamers
contemplate just what will be. From
ruins of our worshipped ways we’ll
never see those new worlds rising
on foundations built from idols
shattered, ground,
reconstituted,
bound to truth
by stubborn facts
that would not wash away.
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