Despite the Desired Lie

Despite the desired lie, truth emerges adamant and final.

I crave to believe in words’ potency

even while the deep cellars of my mind

reverberate to God’s mocking laughter.

There no rock could remain secure and certain

when the echoing earthquake jars and splits

all meaning built tall and beautiful and many-storied

beneath a stony sun.

Until, for disbelief, one cannot build again.

No man can live and not build again.

Then therefore rise again, floor on floor,

flight on flight,

foundationed upon clouds,

castles in the air: immaterial,

they endure, eternal

in vacuous dissimulation.

So I too, the seer, in the name of “truth”

endlessly refine the truthfulness of words

and their stone-hard referent: all man-made; all human.

I mold my words from air

and fold them to mean a matter,

and here they stand: unbreakable as stone.

And if the mocking laughter stills and the earthquake silences

Then I dare invite the flood

Or invoke the steeling fire.