Our Losing Battle With Truth

Truths,

those endangered specimens

that quietly grow

in the cracks and crevices 

of your local library

It is easy to deceive ourselves,

to ignore those truths

That life, perhaps,

has less complications

Oh, comfortable truths

don’t dampen our day,

but their ugly cousins,

the uncomfortable ones,

those darken our moods,

cause us to question

our very choices

So we dig a hole in our mind

and bury them, like caskets,

far below the surface,

covering the traces 

of our self-deception

with a story or excuse

that keeps our thoughts 

cozy and congenial,

easy to swallow

Uncomfortable truths

twisted into comfortable lies

“Cows give us milk” 

Ah, the pleasant satisfaction

of this guilt-free lie

perfectly disguises

the awkward reality

that when you are drinking

the milk a mother 

creates for her baby,

then her baby isn’t

But images of 

unwanted, separated,

and slaughtered babies

don’t pour over our 

Lucky Charms 

with quite the same delight

“They only had one bad day”

The ease with which we 

attribute love

as the defining aspect 

of an industry raising 

someone with the 

explicit purpose

of intentionally

causing their death

baffles a rational mind

So the day we took 

from them their mother

to her dark, lonely demise

doesn’t qualify, 

by our standards,

as a bad day for the child?

Watching their family 

disappear one by one

to never again return

doesn’t disrupt your 

definition of good days?

If an eighteen-month-old

human child was tragically

brought to his end 

at the hands of a drunken driver,

would we mourn the 

months and years 

so heartbreakingly

taken from him,

or would we find 

happy comfort 

that this child 

suffered only

one bad day?

But even these images

from which we quickly turn

and twist away

are themselves an

intentional means 

of distortion

How can we fail, 
in 2019,

to comprehend

mass production? 

In each image of a farm

we circle through our brain,

a bright sunny sky

warms a small red barn

But Old MacDonald bought 

a factory farm 

a long time ago;

It is just easier 

to lie to ourselves

E-I-E-I-O

11 Jan 2019