Poem as Lie

A mother and a father lie to their baby boy.

‘We’ll never lie to you,’ they lie. 

They continue to lie. 

‘We can’t lie.’ they say, or, ‘You’d better not lie

because bad things happen to liars.’

They happen to be naturally good at lying. 

The boy believes the lies but lies anyway. 

About the sky, he lies, ‘It’s not worth a damn. You’re better off

looking down.’ About down, he lies,

‘It’s great down here. Join me.’ 

Someone from the sky descends to join him. 

He lies and lies to her, saying 

‘This sadness is nourishment,’ and, ‘This hurt

is necessary.’ 

One night, a new baby boy is laid in its cot

listening to the boy, now a man, repeat 

the lies he heard in his youth.

He has become so tired by life

he hasn’t tended to his lies

as a soldier would his rifle – greasing the latches 

and brushing out the barrel –

so corrosion has bloomed. A mechanism seizes, 

causing part of the casing of a lie to snap off. 

Now he can see inside

light through a membrane picking out veins

that chart, like sepia navigation 

to places we once wished existed

but now take for granted

and a little, hand me down, broken heart

that stopped feeling generations ago.