Why We Believe Obvious Untruths
       

My father once filmed a stop-action scene
of presents filling up under the tree, proof

that Santa Claus was invisible but real.
I stuck to my guns before I was given guns,

even before I became a teenage interrogator,
learning Russian from defectors, practicing

techniques to find the weak point in others
and exploit how the truth was malleable.

Our loved ones begin the parade with obvious
half-lies on how we look or that everything

will be fine when we don't know if the future
holds mud pie or devil's food cake. We are told we

will be able to lift ourselves by our bootstraps,
one of the reasons why my parents kicked.me

out and I joined the Army, too young to know
that belief is the paralyzing absence of fear,

dangerous in the way waving your hand over
a flame might change the annals of history.

Ideas are news. Ideas are insane. Ideas are art.
Inside us, inside the earth. Whistles in the dark.

We sprinkle secret desires into tales whipped
into batter, baked, and served to oohs and aahs,

taste the concoctions that make us purse our lips
from a disastrous recipe now mistaken for a kiss.

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Copyright © 2018 Martin Ott All rights reserved
from America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission