Shape and Substance

“…lies, plain and simple.”
James Comey
9 June 2017

When you lied
I became false,
untrusting and untrusted;
my rage rings hollow in my ears,
my righteousness is disingenuous.
I am no longer witness
but complicit, a co-conspirator,
cuckold, a piebald jester
with painted face and belled cap,
a player in the mummer’s game.

I have no memory
of truth, or confidence
in trueness, and when I speak
I add lie to lie to lie.
We will die
this way, all of us, die
our death of lies and lie
in each other’s embrace
in the sweet sarcophagus
of our self-justification.

But may there come a time to be
reborn, newborn, first-born
of a new creation,
birthed from dust of rocks
beneath the ache of time,
and molded of the spittle of stars,
fresh-breathed into another garden
before the tree bears its knowing fruit
and there are not yet questions
to be asked and answered.

Nothing is so cold as half-spent rage.
Dismiss
apology as little more than vague
refrain
offered while the chorus leaves the stage.
Release
the pent-up inner storm where masquerade
as rain
the tears that might have made us more than this.

Still, her sleeping rhythm speaks kindly
in the dark,
and the silver moontide through the blinds
revives
a hope of healing, though it leave behind
a scar,
yet another wound, like all its kind,
survived.
The best we do is not the best we are.