Truth To Power

Truth To Power

You shrink this country step-by-step into
the white-tinted past, tucked
between embroidered English rose sheets,
where there’s no one left alive
to contradict your false memory.

I screw my mind into books
make mental sawdust of their pages,
catch green glimpses of other lives,
choose how much I feel for
the tender matrices you sever.

This world no more concrete
than sheets of filo pastry piled as flat
as people used to believe the earth was,
cracking under the strain
of co-existing.

You can’t claim it’s leadership
if they follow by default.