Truth Truer Than True (Part 3) – Mad Chaos: February 4, 1999

Dreading the Opening Line

The time I was dropped off back home was nearing 1:00 a.m. and from there I just started watching television until I finally jumped on this Diary. I wanted to have the right mind-set when jumping on my Diary and I didn’t really find it until the late hours of the morning. What I’m bothered about always is my starting paragraph in my Diary entries. This is what puts me off writing most times but once this is out of the way I can be my normal self. First appearances, don’t I live by them and the rules that abide by them.

Thursday 7:20 a.m.

Once again I am here early, very early in the morning and I know I need my sleep but in these last couple of hours my poetical mentality has struck a chord. This came just after reading the last of ‘The Love Poetry Of Shakespeare’ and reading an exert from the editor’s notes I was inspired to write what I thought about truth and truths that were truer than true.

Embellishing Without Lying

They made it all so easy for me to interpret truth in my own way, to analyze the truth and naïveté in my Sonnets and to administer a truth about this. This Diary could be full of lies as with these truths I could embellish and make it seem prettier than it would seem. But, I do not embellish, I do not lie and this Diary is as true as you can get. But, apart from the naïveté of this Diary being so true and straightforward my poems are much different.

Instead of speaking truth in my poetry I speak largely of truth truer than true as in most times I am not speaking of myself but of elements I cannot account for and thus must embellish. As I do not know much about topics that I embellish upon (Like love’s exploits outside of my own, nature and time to name a few) I am seen to forswear what I swear to be true, thus creating deceptive truth.

Three Short Poems

Anyway, away from my philosophical talk, let me now get to the factors for which I started once again to write in this Diary. There are three poems here that I am going to admit, each one no bigger than four lines. The first two are of Haiku form and would give better understanding to the third poem that is free verse but of four lines of ten syllables. The first speaks of time, the second of truth truer than true and the third about embellishment.

For what shall hold here,

But a truth truer than true,

That speaks but a lie,

A Haiku About Time

How thou dost cloak thee,

Aged brow, with thy rags of time,

That shan’t yield thy years,

Explaining the Haiku

The first Haiku that has been printed speaks in conjunction with the free verse poem I am about to admit after this short prose. As I will explain later in these writings, the first poem speaks about truth that is truer than true. Simply placed in this Haiku, a truth that is embellished turns out to be a lie without regard. As if to say you have talked a thousand tongues when the only tongue you speak is the only tongue you know is to embellish and deceptively is a lie.

The second Haiku speaks of time in a manner that I had also heard in part from a source on television and have here turned those thoughts and realizations into my own wordings and ideas. The initial idea for a poem as such had come from watching the show before ‘Ask Harriet’ (Where the name escapes me right now). I heard one line of poetry that I thought was absolutely magnificent and with I was inspired.

Yet, that inspiration didn’t come until I went to sleep and in those first few minutes had time to think about that idea and build upon it. This second Haiku speaks how time is like a dirty rag that covers you with age and shall never take back the years it puts on you, it has no sympathy or emotional value as such. Now, let me get to the free verse you are probably waiting with patient ears to hear…

The Free Verse Quintet

I shall with these remarks chide my true worth,

That in truth is bred and in lies gives birth,

‘That I am most just, O, that I am more’,

Then, I in truth have embellish, made lore,

Marks and Aphorisms

At first this quintet was going to be poetry about how I have created marks (stretch marks) on my body and in turn hiding my true worth but who wants to look at this poem in ten years time and feel sorry for me. The original line was going to be something like ‘I shall ere with these marks hide my true worth’. Tonight I also found out that I am the aphorist of my poetry. Aphorism meaning that I give basic truth to some point in as little as a sentence.

An example of this given to me by the world book dictionary would be to say ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion’ indicating a near truth. To analyze this some more one would tend to think that this line indicates that a lion would guard better than a dog when alive but once dead the dog would seem more fear creating. But, in poetical stance (And philosophically), to forswear that swearing I could say that for hunger’s sake, a dead lion would be better than a living dog. As fodder, the dead animal is the preferred and is better fodder.

Truth Breeding Lies

This quintet speaks of my understanding of being naïve in poetry and speaking of truth, more truer than true. My true worth is that ‘I am just’ but, to speak truer than truth shall it then become a lie to say that ‘I am more’. ‘That in truth is bred’ would state that I am always speaking a truth about myself and my poetry. ‘In lies gives birth’ states that too much breeding of truth shall in turn give birth to lies.

Thus, To say truth is true and to embellish gives birth to lies. This gives way to the saying, something truer than its own truth shall be falsified and thus, shall be false. As the poem suggests, the person is feeling ‘Most just’ which is his true worth but trying to embellish how he feels with much greater a description would give way to a deceptive lie.

To put it simpler, if I feel on any given day that I feel ‘Good’ and I embellish upon that in saying that I feel ‘Great’, I would be stating a truth truer than true and in turn it would be a lie. I don’t feel great, I feel good and even though that embellishment has decorated my feelings they are deceptive and thus are a lie. But, regardless of these truths truer than true, they have a place within poetry’s stanza and thus like the last line cites, truth truer than true in poetry is lore.

As Shakespeare’s Sonnets show the difference between poetry’s truer than true and telling the truth I take away from the naïveté associated with poets and in turn forswear my own swearing. Rather than typing, ‘You are fair, I say it in words as near to your beauty as I can make them’ I forswear my truth and make difference in my poetry. If poetry harbors not these embellishing hands, how else shalt poetry breed, with truth’s fine cat, but also his whiskers.