David Ades: Extracts from a Liar’s Notebook

If you tell the lie, tell it slant 
but with a direct gaze, with utter conviction, 
tell it as if you believe it is truth, 
 
again and again – and in the telling 
watch it transform, watch it become truth, 
become certainty, immutable, 
 
as if it were never other, 
and in this way fool most of the world, 
save those nearest ones who taste the lie, 
 
who feel it in their guts, who tremble, 
wounded, diminished, whose love 
wavers, becomes muddied, conflicted; 
 
and then tell yourself another lie 
in the same way, justifying the first if it 
is not yet truth, if any doubt lingers, 
 
so you become blind to the damage 
you have wrought, the damage you will repeat, 
the devastation all around you. 

Copyright 2015 David Ades. First published in Verity La – Heightened Talk.