TO TELL THE TRUTH

Alan Britt

What’s this?

Concrete particulars without waists,
without hope of contracting STD’s,
without possibility of guilt?

Nonsense.

Touch not,
see not,
hear not,
taste not,
but smell the exhaust of abstractions!

Such is the plight of the literati
forever shivering in a sea
of nothingness, as if tubercular verbs
& anemic adjectives
could pour the bristling wine of intelligence
from an albino flask,
as if desire alone
could rattle the angels of reason
from hibernation,
as if, only, as if words,
naked, or half-dressed
in tailored Italian suits,
words in Victorian nightgowns,
words stitched together
as bombs, IED’s, switchblades,
words pulled from color-coordinated cardboard boxes
popping like popcorn or newly improved tissues
guaranteed to soothe
the cumbersome souls
of humans vaguely hot on the trail
of something hitherto unknown,
or at least lethargic
like the government drugs of choice.

I say inhale the feathers
of lightning-streaked, ochre-winged
words the size of an index finger
flocking the imagination’s branches,
chattering, otherwise preoccupied,
words dying, staining the psyche
with the purple berries of the crowberry bush
bleeding the sidewalks of…ahh… whatever,
you know, words, words, words,
that shiver their archetypal hindquarters
whenever they spot the aberrant hyenas of truth
loitering nearby.