Category: Lies

It doesn’t quite work
blunt humour and sharp asides
an immiscible blend of mateship and authority.
Rehearsed spontaneity
duets with artificial self deprecation
it brings to mind amateur dramatics.

For the next 12 months
he will be our guide, mentor, teacher
and for one or two …..executioner
the last difficult – but ruefully essential.

Our career path is demanding
high school teaching not for the uncommitted
but
we should be congratulated
for the foresight to choose this provider.
“Provider”
repeated – repeatedly.
He would like to tell us
would be irresponsible of him not to
this provider is without parallel – graduates eagerly sought.

The programme
always highly regarded
but recently improved by substantial revision
a process with which he was closely associated
“we would be foolish not to mine his expertise.”

It is two decades since he faced
adolescent curve balls in the classroom
but that is of no concern
he had been a very good teacher
exceptional
one of the best.
We know that – he told us.

The phone call goes past three hours
into a new day, month and year
the last dark of December
a time of abandonment and resolution.

It was a resolution to abandon – marriage
he told her that night.
They had been ten years by then
a decade
the fault line along which relationships rupture.

Her words shaking and raw
rush from the earpiece
panic stricken rummaging for a lost heirloom
indiscriminate objects hurled from confused drawers
harmless paper and lethal paperweights.

Tears subside into ill-equipped optimism
a lifeboat can be launched.
Just the two of them
shore is some way off ….. but lights are visible.
Paradise can be regained – what are my thoughts?

Irony has its own malice
the listener for hope
“proudly”
speaks her mind
even when people would rather not hear
now she doesn’t. Truth or dare?

Their life together was a series of inadequate practises
reading from the script
not committing the lines.
Dress rehearsal forgives skipped passages
centre stage punishes.
Truth?
I didn’t dare. It would have been suicidal.

During Nixon’s Watergate, lies turned professional
becoming “selective mistruths.”
Mistruth : linguistic blending of wrong and right.
Balanced. When added together the sum is zero. Neutral
Neutrality
hard to find
impossible to manufacture.

When his son was killed, I didn’t write immediately.
For several weeks
morality marked time
wouldn’t commit – couldn’t be forced.
It worked solitary hours on the mathematics of grief
determining shock and sorrow
adding compassion
subtracting personal resentment
resentment at his indifference to my abducted ambitions.

What Is the number …… when blank is the answer?
Zero?
Infinity?
Undefined?

Eventually I wrote
his loss too devastating to remain unacknowledged.
The vicarious emotions came quickly
words to package them easily
everything written was true
except the bit about him being an example to his son.
That was eyes closed personal fiction
even with the retouching permitted by obituary
I could never quite escape the ill ease
of attaching my signature to a selective mistruth.