When the Truth is Dimmed
Lina Ru
When the Truth is Dimmed
Science must be trusted
as it is doubted, poetry
must be protected when
the truth is dimmed by
illusionists. Science must
be trusted when evidence
makes it inevitable to say
that’s a fact. If the denial
of truth elongates beyond
the walls of a faint idea,
an entrenched psychosis
will threaten our century.
The more I reflect upon
the fragile nature of mind,
the more I realize society
is as delicate as my mind.
The further we remain
from the facts, the deeper
we’ll fall into the shock
of cognitive dissonance.
There’s no tale I can tell
to prevent you from a fall,
if I haven’t seen the pit.
The threat is not the fault,
but the ignorance of a hit.
To begin by not knowing
is necessary, but to deny
what’s known is lunacy.
I don’t want to be a moon
nor be cast as a reflection
if I can prevent a disaster
before doubt consumes me.
The chaos ensued will define
not only ourselves, unaware
of how knowledge is built,
children will learn to hate
sooner than we can forgive
the narcissistic who forged
a wall of denial and deceit
that became a histrionic
psychosis, chronic necrosis
we don’t how to deal with!
Sleep, sleep, find ways to rest
your worries, your suffering,
breathe, admire surroundings
not tainted by angered tears,
cultivate simple habits of joy,
only then we’ll vanquish fears.
If you think you’ll conquer
fear faster than we can heal,
you are spinning lies to deal
with shadows projected upon
the wall of deceit and denial.
Repeat the false equivalence,
repetition doesn’t make it true,
only difference can bring light
to the safe haven of evidence.
Our ignorance will be pardoned
as long as we grow and marvel,
give the universe a way to say:
How poetic humans truly are!
Be bounded by a pact of love.
Give them the necessary wisdom
to flourish in an earthly haven.
Instantly, UniversE falls silent.
Humanity at last has learned that
we don’t need voices from above
to tell us who we are, awakened
from the entrenched psychosis
we realize how poetic science is.
If I allow science to be poetic
and I am poetic as well, we will
be bounded by a pact of truth
that will liberate us from the
wall of fear, ignorance, denial
and the pull toward self-deceit.
Yet I am still afraid but a light
has been cast upon my frontal lobe,
en-lightenment has taught me none
other than en- isn’t me, only light
as I fall asleep AND reject IT: gone
with the light! Light is not in here
nor out there. It is by seeing bare,
bare of interest, bare of selfishness,
bare of narcissism, bare of biases,
bare of conflict, bare of callousness,
bare of hatred, bare of distortions,
bare of self-righteous mala leche
until eventually, I am bare of fear,
not because there's no danger here
or there, but because I'm stripped bare
to the point of no return where I realize
I have erred as much as I have breathed.
It is then that I am truly victorious
for my effort, not the money collected,
for being a constant succession of facts
that is documented in a vast poetic tract.
That's victory! Not a prize! The fearless
redeem their erring, employ their effort,
what is the passionate force that leads
you to the documentation of your past?
Note: The prefix en- means “to go inside of”, “to cause a thing to be in”. When we talk about en- lightenment, we are giving light the attribute of being an external thing we have to go into. The word itself hijacks our being light because the word by itself places us outside of light in the first place. My poem wants to disrupt the word en- lightenment by saying: I cannot become enlightened because I have always been lightened by the force of unconditional love: the power to love, create, and accept who I am as I am despite erring as much as I breathe. I have to face the fear within myself and the culture around me toward whatever I sense to be dangerous and erroneous. After facing it, I must accept that the only way out of a psychosis is to adhere to the facts and the scientific evidence because wisdom is the way out of fear. The question is: Will be we able to grow and accept that science is fundamental to our ability to be in the light of knowledge which lessens our fear? If we cannot, a new dark age will fall upon us and we need to collect evidence of what is happening now through your own art which includes the sciences. Science is the art of interpreting facts. Art must become the science of interpreting creativity. How? Science is about facts. Facts have to be collected in notebooks. (See the work of Bruno Latour) Art and science aren’t separated. Document your art. As soon as it becomes an artifact, it is a fact. It can be measured. We can study it as we can study archeology. Science is the documentation and then interpretation of those facts. In science, the documentation won’t change but it can be retested (documented) to prove veracity, but only the interpretation changes through time. Not the facts! We must bridge the sciences and the arts by being scientific in our arts and artistic in our science.
