Photography © Edward S. Gault

 

Speeches Truths Powers

Your unsolicited frivolities
pinned fast against your horizontal globe—
what’s from without comes from within, so speak!
Don’t let your mouth be that with which you think.

This sun has not yet set in this locale:
what truth this hour is true in scope and scale?
What single truth you juggle at a time
is caught in every now until next week?

By sophists, charlatans, and swindlers all
have ph’losophers allowed themselves beguiled:
since trained philosophers can be misled,
what truths with what compulsions might you speak?

Sincerity alone lacks honesty,
the uncreated stamp of Am Is Are.

 

Edward Burke writes under his own name when not writing under the anonym “strannikov” and vice versa. He has written flash (absurdism, noir humor, science satire) and essays since 2011 and verse since 2016, with work published both online and in print.

Edward S. Gault is a poet and fine arts photographer living in Brighton, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Spectrum, Wilderness House Literary Review, Interlude, Currents, and Encore. His poetry collection, Airhead and Other Poems was published this year by Read and Green Books.