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John F McCullagh Aug 2017
Aletheia looked into my eyes
and I could not avoid her stare.
Her silence a grim accusation
as I shifted uneasily in my chair.
No words escaped my lying lips.
No words could change my fate.
All men are confronted by the truth
Be they small or great.
Aletheia, you see, would be my judge;
such was my despair.
I looked again to see her face
and saw mine own image there.
Aletheia in  Greek means truth or full disclosure. Here it is an openness to uncomfortable personal truth as in the Philosophic of Heidegger
The sun's slowly sinking
Why doesn't the ocean boil
I'm sitting here thinking
In all of the fresh dug soil
With rainbows and dew
And all the other things too
I guess I don't know
Why should it be

The sun now is quite low
I guess that's where it should be
Maybe it's time to go
It's just that I cannot see
What is with this game
And why do we take the blame
It all seems pointless
It seems so sad

Where is our happiness
Or was that a passing fad
It's been a while I guess
Now I can't even be mad
From start to the end
No matter the words I've penned
I finish crying
For all will spoil
Copyright June 29, 2010 by Timothy Emil Birch

The title of this poem is old Greek meaning "truth" or more correctly "un-concealed".
Fiel Jan 2020
The Truth is,
I am the Earth and You are the Sun
And I revolve around You
Without You, everything would be in chaos
The Earth would be a dark and cold planet
A lifeless ball of ice,
You are the Sun that warms me
And your warm gives me life,
I am the Earth and You are the Sun
And this is my way of saying Good night.
Bonne nuit Adeliz
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
it happened to me like it once did at the Gants Hill
Odeon, i supposed to see Jumaji,
instead i saw the Little Princess - with two old women
knitting - don't know how it happened -
the little girl got out of the attic like a revision of
Cinderella - somehow - later i ran skipping imitating
a deer hop home - i don't know, i must have been
10 at the time.

i said i was seeing Nabucco - but instead if was seeing
a version of operatic Goethe - (gef eh), read the work:
die leiden des jungen Werthers - the sorrows of youthful
Werthers - can everyone stop the ******* clapping
before the act is over, stop your provincial habits
like eating food without a knife only using the fork!
**** me... stop! you do it more so during ballet -
but in opera? please! stop that seagulls' flapping of wings!
mind you, that's how it goes these days -
tourists from home counties are seated -
pensioners - who apparently have no money -
i'm 30 this year, you think i wouldn't spot someone younger than
me in the oyster shell of an opera house dome?
a few, by a few i mean arithmetic of one palm of my hand -
that's about as many youths appreciating classics -
no more thereafter.
so i sat there, i was told it was Italian opera,
later i was told it was Wagner (i hate Wagner) -
but there were french horns in the orchestra and the opera
was done in french, what the ****?!
so adding the dot dot dots... the french are real bores
in Opera... the french can't do opera! for the love of god
they can't do opera! i admit a almost cried with
a dying wish and a toilet break when Werther sand his
last - i almost ****** a tear like salting a curry -
but the French CAN'T DO OPERA!
the German can, Italians too - let the French write philosophy,
the French CAN'T WRITE OPERA -
although the fourth act saved the entire spectacle -
i do admit with the back of my mind present
that the children's choir was a salvage point -
oh poor Werther - soft-spoken German, must be either
Saxon or slang - *verter
- vide cor meum -
the French aren't allowed operatic expression -
banish them toward the ***** of Stendhal - banish them!
but you know... i can count almost half a year to
respect my memory since i last stood in an urban environment,
with Duck Trump accents demonising the air -
so tacky, so ******* out of place...
prosthetic limbs equated as people with their
tourist visa permits scaffolding the areas where
a Guinness sells at 5 quid while in provincial pubs it sells
well under 3 quid - i came up with a maxim along the way,
waving Kant's critique of pure reason along the way
(exaggeration, well and truly established, necessarily) -
a book contra a mobile phone use -
when i got back to the outer suburbs of London, or "London",
or simply greater, after seeing the panic in the central
sphere of commotion, i simply said the words:
an hour for them is a day for us.
an hour for them is a day for us - drop the paranoid
straitjacket clause revised -
there is clear distinction - in my fashion i was worth
less than £100 - most people where worth per item an excess
of that - London is an eerie place there days -
e.g. Sarah (33) communications manager -
an Arab stole her chance for a one-bedroom box or
something resembling living space -
Eve (24) -property guardian etc., 27 people sharing
one kitchen, quasi-squatting in a removable van of brick;
Aletheia (33) back with her parents in Brighton
(cue the scene from Hellraiser: Inferno - the last
scene, the noooooooooooooooooooooooo! and your childhood
bedroom) - well, d'uh; t'ah d'ah!
London is eerie - the only person smiling was me,
the rest of the people looked boxed, Hammersmith
Hamsterwheel types with duck-taped around their foreheads the
slogan: jog on... jog on, keep calm, keep on jogging.
you said Doreen or did i say Doreen and was this a
short-term memory placard advertising a "wish you were here"?
the French can't do opera - they're the same bores
in opera as the Germans are in thinking -
Jules Massenet did no wrong but undid so any wrongs -
but then crescendo! the most ****** fragment of the opera -
next to me a plump beauty with her boyfriend -
throughout the second act our arms were touching
and i rhymed my breathing to the rhythmic of hers -
clothed, neither naked, neither penetrating -
i guess the English pinnacle of ******, chaste -
in the third act our legs were touching sadistically knee to knee -
nonetheless London is to tacky - so eerie - so foreign -
so not imitable English - forget Soho or the East End
like you already forgot the folklore of the ancient
English smog of the 18th century chimneys -
it's gone - bye bye - it won't return - it was never intending
to return - it seems only Camden remains to be levelled -
or Vauxhall... we'll all be rich phantoms by then -
whether a real swimming pool for the rich or a virtual
swimming pool for the poor, it won't matter -
dreams will hardly be summoned for poetic partisan expression
bewildered as to whether the simulation or the actual partaking
are that far apart - it won't matter -
such a night in London i summed up with words:
for them an hour, for us a day - the discriminatory relativity
poker-handed us the ****** expressions that way -
but in the countryside... so much air, and so little
minute phobias grown into offshoots of skyscrapers -
so much air... so much air... so much air...
and no courtesan airs... bow... mm hmm... huh?
THE FRENCH CAN'T WRITE OPERAS!
Kev Catsi Jan 2022
People opened the door
for a new beginning
they're not expecting
but still excited and longing for that feeling
A feeling that we called love
But holding their hearts with their gloves
Assuring they're not too attached
and can easily detach
But
It's not about their strong personality that other people cannot handle
it's about themselves, who are afraid they can't give back what they receive
that's why they chose to abandon and leave
the real thing in front of them
still a wise decision to minimize the damage..
A pragmatism.
Precision is everything. Bodies will be accounted
  with accuracy, one by one, and then all. Buried
  in the  chaîne opératoire.   Aplomb simmering
  in the sinews, cold as metal. Daylight will collect
  all that is disposed. Twilight will erase the monuments as cathedrals gorged, fat with prayer
   but before this, what impetus?

 Shot from the in-between, hip and pelvis.
     Surpass something from the peripheral:
 There are fugitives   conquering   secret places.
     Behind tense trees is the sought-for  enemy.
  Blinding light as   shot from  a hollow chamber
    the size of a dilated pupil: in a flash, 
             paraffin smearing   the  languid   visage.
   Hold   your   breath   and do   no harm
    to statistics.
               Nothing is  sure in   the   blotched minute.
    Stepping    on    bones    like  twigs,  names
        identical,   faces   disguised by    elements:    fire         as   sweat  and   blood.
         Air  pernicious   as   unheard   call for  mercy.
     This is   water:   the  one   who has  crossed
         the  river, close to   touching  the hand
      of   god.   Earth    a   trembling    grave.

      Words   roam as  should there  be  always
  in a  body, a  dazed  ornate  for a tractable  beast.
     You are here    for  passing. Prayer  is  intolerable,
    mind  the  sound  later  in newsprint. We  are
       the  same  muck   plastered   to stucco. It  rained
    ballistic  somewhere  between    the   sure-footed
         paper and   the   drawn line:

     They word it here as aletheia.
      The victims still unidentified.

In between,
     nonplussed   punctuations. Home  will  be  empty,
        if  not    for   candles. Carry   this   diadem
    across and    place  it  over the  helm of this
       broken   skull. Save   later   the  days for
     remember:  let  elegies perform nomenclature.

     Counterargument   was   day  if blinded
         by   intrusion. It has  happened,
    indelible.   Marked  by coordinates,  likened
    to   where  body parts  must be.  Unchallenged
       to  dismiss  the  derelict:  never to   return to
    geography.

          Dust on the ground.
          Rusted this  morning:  a bond broken into,
         the alloy  of an unknown   body
        breathing in the austere air of who   defied
            the incidental.
        It  will
     never     wear  off.    There
         is     only     reminder.
For geography.
valoneic Jan 2019
tell me,
should i uncover the truths
i have lost to lethe?

tell me,
which have i bartered willingly
to once again breathe?
aurora kastanias Feb 2018
Wallowing in rolling under the covers
only very slowly awaking from slumbers,
half way between Morpheus and Aletheia
my eyes were still closed when the first

thought of you crawled into the warmth
of my morning bed. Serendipitous encounter
forged by your last night’s cajoling words,
lured yet reluctant to give in too swiftly

I thwart the voicing of my impulse, convincing
myself that if I wait a little longer
this blazing fever will clemently abate.

As I settle for the amiable embrace of sunbeams.
On morning imagination
Humans few and far between,
I love you with all my heart
but when the poet's over
turn out the lights; like
all the things I've felt
throughout my life,
"This feels right".
The good, the bad, and
the meaningless. The time
spent wasted, happy; what's
the point of trying to recapture
this? This was written just to say
Bye and Stuff, 'cause it's not for the

last time that I gotta lay down next to
a ****** Bed Track; and I wish that
***** could breathe for me

but I feel there's something for me now
so don't mourn for your boy Mydriasis.

He found a truth, now she's on the path
to find his peace. Call me Aletheia
because I want to be truthful.
Quote:
Line Seven from Jip ("What Was I Talking About?") in Human Traffic (1999)
Eleete j Muir Mar 2022
Life and Death form the grand spiral of time
To take heart, diamond or garlic, and cully sleep
Providing the baptism for the dead who will
Not understand the sword and sorcery of the
Eternal Tables avowed solipsism upon the astral
Realm of unmanifested being.
A deity twin-saviour, an ineffable Tuat
Child of the child- The axiom of the
Four Last Things; A fetch whom obsecrated
Anubis and Abraxas to combat the
Hell's on the one hand and to sustain
The Heaven's on the other,
An aletheia spirit return carrying a
Hand of Glory which licked the expanse
Carnal dust to link metempsychosis
Assignation and arise a spiritual gewiyya
That a saint in heaven would grieve to see.







ELEETE J MUIR
Rob Cohen Jun 2023
Orphan Ontology (an obituary for father time & mother earth)


swap the snapping turtles for shadow puppets
it's Plato's cave all the way down

shimmering hexagonal revelations
stream through my Dimethyltryptamine daydream

out of my eyes unfurled the room
& then the world was birthed from my womb

faint as a whisper, yet haunting
a spectre lingers in the ether
heavy charcoal clouds hanging over me

under orange smoke, I pray
in dusty days of this drought-stricken
Eleusinian mystery  
where the flowers which you painted in the spring
have turned a pale shade of grey disarray

a black hole sun hovers where the superlunary
ought to be
& i find myself lost with insomnia
seeking aletheia on a polar night
stumbling around the thorny maze of my own creation
in the tattered pair of shoes
painted by Vincent van Gogh

in that little ice age
Nietzsche's demon spoke the cursed words
spelling out my Sisyphean eternal recurrence
to carry an acacia cyclops cross
sprawled across the breadth of my back
crafted by my clumsy hands
splintered & ****** as they deserve to be  
for letting you slip through
when my skies were still blue

— The End —