25th
Uncomfortable Facts
I wrote this poem as a response to something I discovered in 2003. It had to be pried out - rather like creating something not of one’s own making - an uncomfortable feeling. Was it an act of creation or completion? It seems appropriate somehow, that this poem has an undecided “lineage.”
”Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to.”
-David Byrne
Uncomfortable Facts
I have inconveniently
been visited by
some uncomfortable facts.
They will not go away.
Instead they poke me
through the pockets
I stuffed them into
to keep them out of sight.
Persistent little devils, aren’t they?
Now I must take care
that my pants aren’t too tight
and I have to be really careful
when I sit down!
Maybe I can buy them off
like corrupt legislators
or absent parents
bribing their children.
Inconvenient facts are most uncomfortable
in the present tense
which confers the undeniability
of a mess still to be cleaned up.
And hence less susceptible
to the spin of revisionism
or the myriad murky layers of deceit
that we deposit on the corpse of truth
as an act of misdirection or slight-of-hand
to cover up the many unseemly things
better handled by politicians.
But isn’t it paradoxical
for me to react this way?
How can I feel like a hostage to facts
when the truth will make you free?
