Manifesto

Like a 1970’s porno flic, or the sound of loose change in your grandfather’s pockets, they can hear you coming a mile away. They know the game, they know your m.o., but there is something about your profligate nature that they can’t shake. You are the bad good boy, with that heart of gold, but the tongue and mind of a car salesman. Like a pool cube, your straightness specious, but put that bad boy on the table, watch him roll and let the truth be told. Just like your father, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, just far enough for refined replication. But your father, and his father and his father before him lay espial, ever vigilant, engendering this uncontrollable obeisance that has been engrained since birth. “You are your father’s son,” your sobbing mother whispered to you in your sleep. You are forever marked with this scarlet letter, an indelible trait in your dna, never errant, constantly augmented and masked like a virus, but always participating. We can only hope to ensconce the outward symptoms or manifestations of this illness, but it is deeply rooted coursing through your veins, recharged with every breath.

Sifting through the ashes of my actions,
Can I say it was all worth it?
Mind altering cocktails
offering potent rocks of delusion,
lubricating parcels of lies packaged as gospel.
Forked tongue utterances:
twice deceiving,
twice beguiling,
delivering messages from an honest heart,
from a disconnected mouth.
Actions guided by the wolf who knows the truth.
What is the truth?
If the truth be told then lies are bounded.
Fortified in a chambers of veracity,
taming the lies.
Little white lies slip,
sometimes getting jumbled with the truth.
So if the truth be told,
it’s tainted with a whisper of lie.