Lying, and: Lines, and: Orders, and: Sincerity

Lying

Why you might feel uncomfortable
     with elaborate weavings, when
they're as apt to catch on hard fact
     as to unravel or become one
more maze you'd forgotten the way out
     of, any one could understand.
The prudent shun a purely gratuitous

     complexity. But this reluctance
to pretend you enjoyed a meal, a book –
     to say to someone you may not
like, nice to see you, when it's to your advantage
     to do so, this pulling back as from
a foul smell or window ledge . . . Why
     fudge, why resort to a "modified

version," mislead, concoct, invent, rather
     than simply lie? Do we intuitively
regard the false, not as unreal, but unclean?
     Are the keenly ironic, ambiguous
phrases we toss off – our evasions and/or
     shufflings, those clever side-steps
we do in dancing – done to hide the truth, to

     keep it from harm's way, secure it,
a place for safekeeping? From whom or what?
     Or is it us? Discretely bending
the data, smearing a line you'd just as soon
     not cross, you're not a fraud
so much as someone hedging his bets, testing
     the ground, noting a nearest window,

door in case an unexpected exit's called for.
     When was it that simplicity sufficed
and like a captured soldier all you had to give
     was a name, rank, and serial number,
and gentlemen – their sacred word? Before
     the invention of torture, was honor
worth more? Was it all there was to lose?

Lines
There are no straight lines in nature.

The edge between lit and shadowed
foliage in the grove is straight enough
to lay a course by, though it points

nowhere. The tree trunks, not quite
half round, set it humming a semi-
quaver, adding their minor ripples

like overtones. Could winds shaking
the leaves, which are the insubstantial
body of the trees at any distance, blurr

a keener division? There's the sharp
horizon, like a bow at rest, curved so
gradually it can run on for mile after

slow mile before you catch on – cracks
in ice, in rock faces, slip-planes, faults
where the earth heaves and breathes.

Orders

1.

Among the young, uniformed food-servers
along the glassed-in counter behind which
trays of sliced cold-meats and cheeses gleam
there's an order – who's deferential to
whom, who moves, who doesn't, shoulder feints, side-
steps, shrunken, abbreviated to save
the busy energy and time – nothing
you'd notice, though they know each of them cold.

2.

A paper littered table. The bosses
chat, straighten their ties, one, jacketed,
sitting, another, shirt-sleeves rolled, darting
off to snatch a tray left uncleared, napkins
from the floor, as if there were hierarchies here
too. Of the two guys sweeping, which one is
moving up? You guess. You make assumptions:
how long do you think you can sit before
you're told, seats are for paying customers?

3

Did you know Tokyo restaurants closed
for the Olympic Games? They had no way
to gage the social rank of foreigners,
which Japanese grammar requires for
polite address. Once rent, the whole social
fabric just might unravel at your feet.

4.

Light and open, the atrium roof
five floors up – don't you feel protected from
the elements? Or do the stray people
sauntering by and those at work seem to
say, no where is safe. If no one comes up
to tap you on the shoulder, does that mean
everyone knows the rules and plays by them,
or does fear, what if, bark out the orders?

Sincerity

There are those who shake
at the thought of being obscure,
ingenuous, and turn to memory
as a wall they can lean against,
rock solid, its guarantees basic
as desire's gutturals. The facts
and their significance they trust

blindly, like events beheld, are
just the ones that form their lives –
knowing they're not made up...