Truth: The Walls Around Us

I walked back into the apartment
Possibly drunk
With the aims all fucked up and familiar
I’ve felt the same way since she
Stopped by to say hello
And I wanted so badly just to kiss her

Remember her?
In Polaroids we were fine then.
What were we laughing at?
I tried my hardest to burn them
But they got put up on my wall
Instead.

Truth: Dusty Diary, Found in a Softball Field

Open the book, taste her smell in your memories
And just as quickly,
Shut it.
Shield your eyes.
Bound with dead
Animal skin
And filled with life;
An unnerving paradox.
Hands shaking, read the first line,
And the next,
And the next,
And it gets harder
When the little three-by-four inch square
That was engraved into your brain
Falls out
Faded yellows and de-saturated sky
Twist and turn
An autumn leaf that the book
Didn’t have a chance
To catch
Like so many others

Two kids smile back at you
From the floor

Pick them up,
Dust them off.
Their arms aren’t around each other
Now.

It was a book of astronomy,
But the only thing you read
Was
Just about a shooting star.
Stuck in the Perseids.

Lie: That Night, I Didn't Think We Would Make It

Onramp
Switch into 5th
Accelerate
Pass
Decelerate
Coast
And keep coasting
Past the dust gathering on the edge of the plain
Outside of your view, coming closer
Until tiny drops of medicine fall all over
Your body

Roll up the windows
Hit the accelerator
And hydroplane, tires loose, stop
Open up your arms
Open up your mouth
Open up your body

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

So bright, natural-electronic
Flash, freeze frame it
And you’re placed on silver halides

Until the police push you in the gutter

Onramp.
Switch into 1st
Decelerate
Clean up you: Mess.

Lie: Signal

Bits of speech sparkle
Public radio debris
“It’s okay if you’re still a bit hung up on that”
Swish-swish-snap
And a country song starts playing
Your hand keeps turning the little knob
Further and further, the white line speeds past DJs you might have met
Looking for the semisweet aftertaste of the song you heard last night, overplayed
In the crowds
At the party
Or the sickly smell
In the bathroom
Maybe on the Pavement
Blasting from a loudspeaker
Overheard, forgotten,
And slipping down the wet storm drain
“Where were you last night”
-break for an advertisement-
It’s all a mess anyway
Better leave it in the static
Swish-swish-click
Un-sort-it

Deception: "Babelfish Hypothetical"

It turns out that Douglas Adams wasn’t only one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century, but he was also a sort of sage. Bacteria has been synthesized that essentially acts as a ‘babelfish’, which, if you haven’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, allows you to understand every language as if you had spoken it since birth.

Does this increase or decrease your desire to travel? If it increases it, where would you go first?

Do you think this will help or hurt international diplomacy?

What effect will the discovery have on the world's various cultural identities?

Lie: Worn

            The Victrola’s wooden needle skittered along the worn grooves of an old 72-RPM record as the kid in the flannel shirt stood and listened; the wrinkled proprietor of the store stopped his work on the miniscule gears of a golden pocket-watch to hear the tune. Jazz exploded from the tinny speakers in the cabinet; little reminiscences of roaring parties and the warm taste of illicit drinks, of the streets downtown and the discarded relics of day-to-day life they contained, of the high hopes and low expectations of the man with the trumpet on the corner. It all coalesced into a few moments of purely human joy and dusty but brilliant white light. The machine gave this to the world freely, and then fell silent. Leaning down, the boy sorted through the books of old records until he recognized a name on one of the paper labels. He sat the thick vinyl on the table, turned the crank, and placed the needle onto the first groove. In the dim light of the sunset window, the boy saw the proprietor smile as the twelve-string guitar sounded in a haze of static and noise, becoming its own echo in the quickly changing chords and vocal melodies. Other peoples’ memories swept over their mind and calmed them, so that when the boy left the store and disappeared into the orange glow of rural night with nothing in his hands, neither he nor the owner was left wanting.