Be True

Man Ray-Observatory Time 1936

Coming down
Calm it, calming
Coming down
Calming, calm it.

-Talk to me

-I wish I could talk—
But easier said;
A few issues remain unresolved,
In fact permanently outstanding.

I have always been afflicted,
If Memory serves,
(Not me though,
Bitch is thoroughly self-serving
With her insidious insinuations,
Rosey sepia’d projections,
Doctored newreels,
Whispering re-writes,
Flat-out brazen taunting,
Wince inducing comparisons;
The future ain’t what it used to be
But was the past so very hot?)
By a stuttering reluctance
To showtell, that would be an act,
Stripping myself bare to tease,
Besides what if there is nothing
Beneath to reveal, could I stand
The disappointment turning
To anger and then inevitably,
As night turns to day, to hatred?
So I crouched my sentences
In an invented, inverted argot
Of my own twisted devising,
A cunning linguistic cant
Impenetrable and dense
Filled with allusions, elisions,
Strewn with the slang and jargon
Of restless haunted journeys;
The most I could hope for
Was an odd sensation of frisson,
The occasional moment of fusion,
Before the dissolution of an imagined unity;
Fracturing, splintering, fragmenting,
Sending me back into my private
Realm where I can babble away,
In my nonesuch nonsense language,
Or just remain silent if I wished,
(and therefore, be true?)

Zaum de dum dada
Voynich Seraphinianus