Wednesday 1 July 2009

FALSE PRETENCES


“The greater absurdities are, the more strongly they evince the falsity of that supposition from whence they flow.” – Francis Atterbury

How easy it is to delude ourselves. We are eager to substantiate our dreams, see our hopes bear fruit, yearn to realise our desires. How often we can succumb to the sweet insistence of a spurious but so attractive premise! We are our own accomplice in the duplicity of the feelings that we manufacture to make our fantasy an actuality. Alas, the virtual reality that we concoct is so flimsy that it seldom fails to survive the probity of logic and fails the test of time…

False Pretences

Drowning in your sea of insinuations
Clutching the bright straws of your gaze
(How duplicitous those eyes!)
I may as well try to capture
A sunbeam in an attempt to save me
From an inevitable death.

I lie, you lie, we lie
And in the midst of all of our lies
There is a truth, so richly dressed;
She looks at us, beaming innocently
Because we cannot tell her apart
From our naked lies.

Too late to turn back now,
We’ve missed our chance
We’ve bypassed the turn-off
Of that saving grace of the detour…
On false pretences, we career on,
And like lemmings, we shall plummet to our death.

This is a poem that I wrote several years ago when sweet lies were so easy to consume. Lies always hide poison beneath their pastel-coloured sugary coating…

Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday

4 comments:

  1. You should have sent this to Gov. Sanford before he raced off to Argentina. Not that it would have done any good.

    Yes, it is often in hindsight that we see the lies and untruths that have paved our paths.

    Good one as usual. I am double hosting the Poetry Wednesday tour on Creative Journey here on blogger and Profiles. Said my goodbyes to 360 alread

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad to be able to follow your poetry to your new even if temporary home.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It is sad when a relationship is in that state, and we fool ourselves into believing that it's ok, and we know it's not. And both pretend to believe the lies until that's no longer possible. And then that old saying "the truth shall set you free" becomes a reality. Does it sound like I've been there? Haven't we all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. another evocative poem and I like the illustration too

    ReplyDelete