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I’ll Tell You the Truth About Love

July 31, 2026
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I’ll Tell You the Truth About Love

(A response to W. H. Auden’s “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”)

A poet named Dubya Aitch Auden

Once asked for the Truth about Love,

Untarnished, unsoiled, unsodden?

We hope and pray heaven above.

I think of a Hepburn named Audrey,

And then of another named Kate,

Who prove that Truth needn’t be tawdry,

And that Love is both wild and sedate.

..

So I say, late lamented friend Dubya,

That the Truth about Love is elusive.

Sometimes Love may seduce and then club ya

Sometimes Truth is not gladness-conducive.

But the Truth about Love is it’s needed,

And can beckon and cure the uncouth,

And the Truth is it’s lovely when heeded,

And is much that I Love about Truth.

Siding in Plain Height

June 30, 2025
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Two things bullies and predators will do are plead guilty to a lesser charge and hide in plain sight. When, for instance, Donald Trump, who is both a bully and a predator, said “Russia, if you’re listening, please find Hillary’s e-mails,” he was hiding in plain sight. When he calls the rape of the working class and poorer a “Big, Beautiful Bill,” he is also hiding in plain sight. There is a nine-year interval between those two utterings. The diligent will find at least seven other exemplars in the interval.

When Trump supporters say he is “brash” instead of saying “he is a shameless liar,” they are on Trump’s behalf pleading guilty to a lesser charge. When Trump himself attributes his lies and/or stupidity to “sarcasm,” he himself is pleading guilty–or perhaps NOT guilty–to a lesser charge. And when he tears up the deal Obama made with Iran, and years later bombs Iran, he is committing a profound crime against reason, with no apology and no remorse.

Prove me wrong, Trump supporters, if you dare try.

The Asymmetrical Heart

January 19, 2025
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The Asymmetrical Heart

We have romanticized the heart/Reduced it to a simple shape/Made myth of its emotive core/Denied our kinship with the ape

Its septa, chambers, valves and pipes/Tell of a greater life-romance/Of oxygen exchange, the more/Essential to Survival’s dance

In comes corpuscular starvation/Sent to the lungs; enriched; engorged; To function make and flush restore/And thus is our Existence forged

The Heart at heart is like a bellows/A squeezebox never on the shelf/So have respect, ye Ladies, Fellows:/It yields not love but Life Itself.

The Poem Exchange: Joseph A and Gary B

February 26, 2021
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A fellow member of my Poets All Call group, a bright and imaginative man named Joseph Arechavala, wrote a poem and posted it to our group yesterday. I found the poem contained a metaphor for Truth that was apt . . . and I also felt compelled to respond. So I wrote a poem too. I have Joe’s kind permission to post our exchange for all the Blogoverse to see, and that will come soon, but first I want to share a drawing I just made, based on the fact that Joe is using a Groucho Marx headshot for his avatar. I thought it would be cute to draw Groucho and one of my own personal heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, shoulder to shoulder and smoking their tobacco products of choice, thus:

2021 0225 grouch kurt

JOE:

Truth is elusive
Like a woman
Standing in the distance
The sun outlining
Her beauty
A woman who
You know will
Never walk towards you
But will remain
A vaguely fair form
In the far away field
And you will
Walk towards her
But never
Come close to her
And you will weep

****

GARY:

Let me be your wingman Joe
Truth’s elusive this I know
She knows EVERYTHING you’ve done
Stuff for spite and some for fun

She has more than one big sister
I suggest you date one mister
Luscious Evidence will show you
Family pics of Truth–you know you

Could do worse than date Deduce Me
More plot twists than I Love Lucy
You’ll be challenged to decide
If you want Truth by your side
Or for a bride
With Lies denied

One more sister makes things clearer
That is Truth’s twin sister Mirror
Gaze deep DEEP into her glass–
TRUTH–she’s HERE!!!
–to Kick your Ass.

Whoops.
Sorry.

****
Gary: Joe, you have captured an important aspect of Truth in your poem. I am grateful. And I hope you see, for all my clowning, an important bit of Truth in mine, mainly that showing an interest in phenomena related to Truth does bring us closer to Truth Herself.

Joe: Gary Bowers It just feels good to finally be writing again.

Gary: Joe, I would love to do a blog post on this exchange of ours. May I have your permission?

Joe: Sure. Post the link so I can read it.

Gary: Will do, my friend!
****
A couple of things before I go. First, Joe and many others in our group are suffering from writer’s block. I think the pandemic has something to do with it. So his comment about feeling good to be writing again is a hopeful sign to me.

Second, this is not the first instance in poetic history wherein one poem inspires another. Christopher “Kit” Marlowe wrote “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” in the 16th Century. One year after it was published, none other than Sir Walter Raleigh wrote “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” a fitting response (snub) to the Passionate Shepherd’s overtures (lusty). And in subsequent centuries other poets wrote poems inspired by the original, and in the 20th Century those two sly dogs Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker both took a whack at it. So History is not by any means being made by Joe and me, but what matters to me is that the creative spark was ignited by Joe, and then I got ignited as well, for a pleasant journey to deeper digging.

n.e.s. #160 of 480: TRVTH

September 26, 2020
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2020 0926 nes160

I live in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, in the United States of America. It is the fourth year of the Trump administration, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just died. Our nation’s Flag is at half mast, a sign of respect, yet Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish, that her replacement not be chosen until after the 2021 inauguration, is being disrespected by the leaders of the Republican-majority Senate, even though honoring her request would also be honoring the word of these selfsame Republicans, who said back in 2016 that a new Justice ought not be chosen until it reflected “the will of the people,” i.e. the election.

It is a sign of the times in my country that Honesty and Decency have been discarded by those in power for the sake of retaining power, “will of the people” notwithstanding. We are in danger of becoming a dictatorship.

A dose of Truth–REAL Truth–and acceptance of Truth, however contrary to what people WISH were the Truth, would do a lot to put my beleaguered country back on track. But too many of us think we can vote for Truth the same way we vote for our candidates. And that, Friends, is insane.

love beauty truth vic (part 2)

March 6, 2016
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Today is Victoria’s birthday. My mission was to write a birthday poem using words Love, Beauty, and Truth. I spent fun, odd time working on acrostic arrangements thereof, but came to feel that simple and ungimmicky would be best. Here, then, is

To Victoria on Her Birthday

In LOVE we find both Hope and Fear.
The tragic BEAUTY of a tear
Reveals the TRUTH as something felt:
We want, we need, we give, we melt.

Happy birthday, dear, dear Victoria!

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love beauty truth vic (part 1)

March 5, 2016
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My incredibly word-adept poet friend Victoria H. has a birthday coming up. I texted her to ask for three words to use in a poem for the occasion. She answered “love beauty truth.” I then asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She answered “world peace and clean water .  . .” I answered, “By the power vested in me as a child of the Universe, I give you Europa, a world at peace and with clean water. Congrats.”

But what I will really give her is the best poem I can do. I’m working on it . . .

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I did a butterfly for Beauty, two adult humans embracing for Love, and the profound phenomenon of the Earth-Moon system revolving around the Sun for Truth. May or may not show up in the poem. Stay tuned for Part 2!

Blog Post #500

May 31, 2014
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003

It is a day like many others. Denise and I went to pick up her Bountiful Basket order and then we went to the gym nearby and then we went to restaurant nearby and then we went home. She took the recycling to the recycling bins on Camino Real and I worked on five-minute portraiture. Ultimately we went to our respective caves to work on art and Art. She has published her latest post, “Mandalas,” and I am working on mine, “Blog Post #500.” The software is taking forever to upload my image, though it is a mere 150K or so.

So I’ll save this in draft after finishing the text, which includes this transcription of the post’s eponymous triple acrostic:

Bedeviled by the Telescum–perhaps they have my number
But here’s a fine true path to keep to boast a most high number
Loose fingers take me to a parlor shopping for a new five
Let’s do licentiousness 4 times–God knows you cannot do five
O do not look for Rhyme nor Rules: for you will find here zero
Got Truth? Got lots, good friend, but Hitting Home I put near zero

Later: opened the saved draft; used “Add Media” to upload the image, which seems a bit blurred but that’s OK; added tags that included “truth,” “rhyme,” “creative process,” and “blog posting,” but not “Telescum,” for that is a word I made up, though it may already have been created unbeknownst to me. Will now post this historic piece, Share it on Twitter and Facebook, and then invite my dear Denise to celebrate life and love.