This is what happens when we tell the truth.

From our mouths fly gobs of flesh and splinters of bone.

We flay ourselves from the inside out

To stand before others without our skin.

The cuts inflicted by words used with intent

Drip with definitional ichor.

Are you a deity in your own regard,

To leak divine fluid that flows with gifts?

Are you a mortal among the rest,

To discharge weak liquid that drains away life?

However you are, you bleed.

We all see this but choose not to know

That our eyes are open yet blindly opaque

That our hands are dripping with shared gore

That our feet are standing on infinite decay.

And even our quietest voices

Scream with a deafening destructive howl.

Time runs on, but our time is running out.

Agamemnon is returning to Mycenae,

Cassandra by his side.

The sails billow and tauten,

the hastening winds driving the ship onwards.

When he leans from the bow,

Does he taste the salt tears of Iphigenia?

When a sudden trough shakes the vessel,

Does he remember her terror?

Cassandra does, but her cries go unheeded,

Stifled by Apollo’s cruel regard.

The Erinyes murmur with the waves,

The curse of the gods on this family woven indelibly.

Whether he is blinded by arrogance or ignorance,

Small matter either, for his fate remains fixed.

Clytemnestra is waiting with her axe

And a mother’s implacable fury,

While on her is fixed Electra’s pitiless gaze.

O Atreides, each of you is born on a funeral pyre

With the cold laughter of the gods your chorus.

Good will not prevail here,

Only sorrow and sorrow and sorrow.

What do you expect?

Niceties and pretty words

Tied round into a neat bouquet,

Bound with sweet sentiment?

Look elsewhere then.

You can find this with ease

On shop placards and inspirational clothing.

I do not provide that facile comfort

Or join my voice to the specious clamor.

Only seek my work if you care to find

The hidden barb that wakes us in the night,

The grinning skull that lives within our mirror,

The sharp dagger we carry behind our backs.

Kindness, beauty, and truth dance around us,

Held in the cries of dying children,

The perfumed stench of garbage mounds,

And the glint of light off the barrel of a gun.

We turn back to our familiar dramas, our distracting entertainments,

our serious gardening, our daily concerns.

We forget, forget, and forget again.

Of course we do, in our commonplace struggles.

Still this knowledge remains.

I won’t write it away.

Not even for your smile.