Truthfully speaking

Or maybe this is white lie by Brian Sankarsingh

I was not a good teenager. I learned to lie and even stole money from my mum’s purse sometimes. I am not proud of doing that, but I tell myself the good I’ve done in my life after has helped. Did I just lie to myself - to make me feel better for being a terrible teenager? I don’t even remember my first lie but I do remember learning how to do it well. What’s that old saying - practice makes perfect. Interestingly as I grew older, I came to prefer the truth. Lying was a lot of hard work. You had to keep track of what you said and also remember the chronology. I don’t know about you, but I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night. So, I resolved to try my best to tell the truth, unless the truth was not the right thing to say. Does that mean I’m still a lier? Can you see the circularity of this argument? Or am I digging this hole only for myself?

Well, dear reader, whatever weird psychedelic meanderings we just experienced resulted in this poem.

No one ever lusts after the naked truth 
Feeling that we would be judged in its sight  
Instead, to protect ourselves from it’s abuse 
And avoid being burned by the light 
 
Humans mask our lives in little white lies 
They’re a shield against the power of truth 
Doing whatever it takes we compromise  
To keep safe from the truth’s mental abuse 
 
Wrapped in these lies we traipse through our world 
Content that no one knows who we are  
Using our lies to make our reality blurred 
Like Band-Aids stuck over scars 
 
Have a look at the person, the love of your life  
Can you truly say you know all about them 
Be they your husband, and sir, even your wife 
They surely hide the truths you’ll condemn 
 
We learn to do this, early on in our youth  
First by accident before it becomes habit  
Now we all have an aversion to truth  
This is the reality for every person on our planet  
 
Some use their religion as a cross they must bear  
They say they recognize lies as a sin 
They say that their sin is absolved with a prayer  
Another lie, another straw mannequin  
 
Thus is our world and always so shall it be  
There are no buts, if, ands, or whys  
It is the thing that defines us as human  
We prefer to be safe in our lies 

Bio: Brian Sankarsingh is a Trinidadian-born Canadian immigrant who moved to Canada in the 1980s. He describes himself as an accidental poet, with a passion for advocacy and a penchant for prose, an unapologetic style, he offers his poetry as social and political commentary.