Empty Words

I’m telling myself

these affirmations,

I’m muttering incantations.

I said all the

magic phrases,

the buzz words

and nothing has changed.

Is this thing on?

I held the pointed tips

of my sentence fragments

out in front of me,

hoping to cut through the noise

like machete through brush.

I lashed out,

swinging through

the tangle,

yet the exclamations

fell flat.

Flailing about

yet just barely scratching

the surface,

like a samurai sword

with a blade of

wet cardboard.

The truth isn’t always flashy

or impressive,

or what you’d like to hear,

but it’s the only thing with

enough substance

to breach

the dissonance.

Wield it wisely,

or you’ll put an eye out.

Through The Prism

With every matter of perspective,

we must take into account

the beholder and

the contours of their mind’s eye.

The way the light refracts

is a matter of the tool used

and what we project.

Conclusions drawn from

kaleidoscopes are more colorful,

to be sure,

but how much is just distortion?

Does the pair of binoculars

miss the forest for the trees?

Beams need not

be straight like arrows,

they curve,

pitch,

yaw and bloom

on their way.

Everything that’s absorbed,

is obscured —

only what returns to our vantage point

is what we remember.

Our minds,

starved for stimulus,

scrounge for the scraps and

fill in the blind spots

where our retinas are.

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You’d be Surprised

At the open-air bazaar of ideas hangs

A smog of apocrypha,

So thick,

You could bottle it,

For any one eager and gullible enough,

To buy.

Yet filtering the miasma,

Of misinformation,

For its kernels of truth,

Shows how easy it is,

For certainty to be crowded-out

by lies.

It covers your face,

With thick soot,

The smell lingers

And stains your clothes-

The gasses

will burn your eyes.

But just because the truth is scarce,

Does not mean it’s not worth the trouble,

Of uncovering-

Keep your hazmat suit handy,

And your goggles on.

Prospecting is a hard days work,

For little pay,

But, nevertheless,

You will find it enriching

If you see it through.

Distortion

distortion

The well-timed,

precisely aligned,

Cathode ray tube display

found in old television sets,

is thrown into disarray,

with the pole of a strong enough magnet.

Perception becomes reality,

then misconceptions set-in,

which threaten the image.

You have to get in,

to reset

and rearrange things,

back to parity-

a return to clarity.

When you come to

and see the true view,

you’ll wonder how you

made due

with skewed hues.