The Misrule of Truths

the misrule of truths


Craig & i sit by the fire again
drinking thick cups of
chocolate (she
says it is
creme
but
we
don’t believe her
she wears a red sweater &
is too beautiful to be believed
truth is beauty: Keats was asked
to fall in love again & laughed & so
some of us see right thru a sheer blouse. . . )
or how we determined humor finds the holes
those holes this hole & what rules
of the game constrict the flow
to avoid the verb to be
& definite articles
cliches & glib
use of rules
someone
made
up
don’t use
contractions
avoid irony
assume
paradox
have your lines vary in length
symmetry is boring harmony
eschew a large vocabulary
(god: who is your god what is your
gospel whose damn life is it: a dogma
hunts the soul lays maggots where you
wanted honey & the grass hanging full with
we were half way there with red hair & a snorkel
i telling him Freud was a fraud his famous
cases fictions he never even met
them made it all up great
stuff especially
how his
only real
study was
his daughter
god i love cigars
& how in a psychological
test Russians will deliberately
give you wrong information if you
seem (or are) stupid: how many moons
circle the earth? i’ll ask the audience:
audience? three
or how Edgar Poe invented the mystery story
& everybody knows that but who the hell
knows about Bret Harte & the western
that he lived with lesbians & Twain
idolized him until Harte became
a social pariah & how my
friend in Arkansas
said he had to
stop drinking
with me because
he wanted to be a judge
& a tag cloud of the words most
used by a poet in a book in a series
of books in a decade a series of poets
poets in a century: derive themes that drove
the times & certain schools & then apply it to
translations: how faithful were you
to the original text:
the uproar the assumptions of fidelity
the “i’m not saying” i mean i do not
even say i understand it but i
counted the occurrences
& well “i’m not saying
i’m just saying” guns
don’t kill people
people kill
people . .
with guns &
bad translations
but ol’ Ram Dass
(his old man called
him ahem Rammed Ass)
said everyone’s a hustler but
that’s a little harsh like if i get joy
from doing selfless things
is that selfish (how
lame a question
is that) or if
i enjoy
going
on &
on
but
aesthetics
like a barbed
wire god condom
says count the lines
the syllables the words
the use of definite articles
Germanic or Latinate
forms of verbs
is Bonazzi
too smart
too dry
is this
a good
dismount
is this falling
in love with a truth
that a ghost can’t claim
how a mama duck pretends
to be wounded drawing a wolf
away from the vulnerable ducklings
so be not too hard on Sigmund
o liar o creature of earth
o my pioneer sell me
a massive codpiece
of really haha hot
bombast o my
fair Verona
button
fly this
pollinate of
a chocolate plant
but sometimes
the wolf eats
the duck;

bats for tequila
flies for chocolate:
the misrule of truths


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry