Truth

Things that bite – a wounded tomcat, thyme, truth.
The stroke patient’s clutching claws mime truth.

Neither Doyle’s readers nor his hero
get romance. Just clues and questions. Crime. Truth.

At twelve, her vocation is starvation.
Her friends like movies, makeovers, slime, Truth

or Dare. She wants mastery, freedom from
the flesh. Transcendence, not some small-time truth.

He pines for the ones who left, recalls hot,
frequent sex, strolls through the Guggenheim. Truth

lost to memory and hunger. We need
nostalgia’s rag to wipe the grime from truth.

While night birds glide above their prey, we
chase the dragon’s tail toward the sublime, truth

evident and able to be borne. In
the morning’s crass, vindictive light, I’m truth-

slapped, worn. Waiting for some savior or some sign
of something better. In the meantime, truth

does what it does. Is life so simple – Make
a ladder of your breath and climb toward truth?

The beggar sing-songs, I charge a dollar
to give compliments, one thin dime for truth.

A slick fib can open lips or doors, make
love easy when there isn’t time for truth.

Poisoned barbs cloaked in honesty hit their
marks. We need a new paradigm for truth.

Stone learned from Keats that hearing mars the mel-
ody. Beauty, not fact, should rhyme with truth.