Do you believe in things the way they are

Or the way you want them to be?

The fact-based former example is truth.

The latter is simply a false story.

A student who says two plus two is four

Cites a mathematical truth.

However, a politician may lie

To get you in the voting booth.

Facts are accepted, not created.

Truth is discovered when the facts align

Or when faith becomes your reality

In matters religious and divine.

Truth can be unvarnished and naked

Or hidden to require a sleuth.

But beware: Truth can be stretched

Or shrunk to a grain or half-truth.

In short: Seek truth

Whether old or a youth.

Truth is like beauty; A thing to behold

In the twinkling eyes of another.

It cannot be bought and it cannot be sold,

Only found. (With no small ’mount of pother.)

Truths can abound when one runneth aground

In the silt-ponds of pure observation,

Where truest of truths are in simplest of proofs.

‘That there glacier has suffered ablation.’

So I package some ‘true’ in corporeal stacks;

“Things-I’ve-learned” somewhere here, ’midst the racks.

But it’s still filtered through the penultimate gaze;

‘Where there’s wound, cannot honesty heal it?’

...Or perhaps Truth’s just cud; dili-gently re-grazed...

(Well, at least in this form none would steal it.)

’Course, the true Truths are facts.

Not these flim-flam abstracts.

Truth’s objective. We only reveal it.

In the end, I defend, whether bland or uncouth,

Be it real, or ideal, or just rumen,

The fact that we think we can define the truth

Is none-the-less ’cidedly human.

flowers in the garden

push through

crumbs of dirt

clawing at sunlight

but slowly

they wither away

crumpling

never revealing their

petals to the

colbalt sky

the ones left

parade their beautiful

colors to

silent eyes

You make me so tired.

Last night I dreamt that I loved you

again.

Running into you causes a rush

of adrenaline that leaves me low.

Talking to you drains me of articulation.

Crying for you leaves me alone.

Knowing where you are spawns a thousand

plans to get there, none of which will work.

Last night I dreamt that I loved you

again.

You make me so tired.

if everyone who loves me

everyone who held me, comforted me

has died

except you

i would stay for you

i would hold you, comfort you

i would endure such a world

to be there, to love you

i would do that for you.

i would stay.

(one day maybe i could do it for myself)

if you went to hell

and i went to heaven

and everyone i love went to heaven too

i would leave

i would spend an eternity burning

trade heaven for hell

just to be with you

even if i couldn’t touch you

hold you, comfort you

if you didn’t even know i was there

i would go in a heartbeat

it’s not a decision

not a good or kind choice

it’s the hook in my heart that pulls me

between you and the struggle

you and the suffering

you and the world

(even if it were a choice

i’d choose you over anything.)

if the world held nothing for me

except grief

and you

i would stay.

The TRUTH is, it’s really Benny Hill we’re watching. But we can’t say those words. Not around Mom. She’d NEVER let us watch this.

Jack sneaks up here after Gene goes to sleep, and Leesha is smoking and bullcrapping with Gramma and Aunt Lori. Mom and Dad are in their room down the hall. A cool thing about living at Gramma’s, it’s a big, long hall, so they can't hear us, and it’s a pretty big room here. Jack could spend the night up here if he could ever just calm down and be cool about it.

Only me and Jorge and Jack know the real truth about Benny Hill that we got going--that we got a SECRET PASSWORD that lets us get away with it. I thought it up. Like Mission Impossible. Now we can talk about Benny Hill RIGHT IN FRONT OF MOM.

We can even plot our strategy of Jack coming up here at 10pm, turning on channel 13, and now we can do it in BROAD DAYLIGHT down there. She doesn’t even have a CLUE! I just changed the wording. Instead of “Benny Hill,” now we just say, “Billy Mountain.” I substituted "Billy" for "Benny," and "Mountain" for "Hill." It's working!

I walked right by her today. She was just sitting in Gramma’s dining room chair. I went, Hey, Jack, you want to come up and watch Billy Mountain tonight?

Jack looked at Mom, then looked at me. A laughing attack was coming on. He almost blew it. But he got control and he goes, Youuuu betcha!

Mom said, What’s Billy Mountain?

What was funnier is, she was genuinely curious, never even suspecting something bad.

I said, Ohhh, nothing. Just a funny new show.

Yeah, added Jack. (He had a handle on himself now.) It’s this guy, he’s pretty funny, all right.

Jorge was there. He also got it. That’s how come he smiled.

Mom kept asking. Her Nostramomus was coming out. She wanted to know what it was about. We were living it right out on the edge.

We told her it was just, like, a variety of stuff. Gramma bailed us out, believe it or not. She said it sounded like one of those old “variety shows,” and Jack jumped right on that one, agreeing all up and down and giggling his butt off almost, but that was that, we can talk about Billy Mountain all we want down there now. The coast is all clear.

Good thing they don't know the truth of this, what we're doing. That blond chick just got her skirt ripped off. Accidentally. Yeah, right. She’s just wearing those thigh suspender thingies that British girls wear. Benny Hill does the salute at her. He looks like we are, like he's seeing something he ain’t supposed to see. Except he's a GROWN UP so why's he just doing that?

Here comes Jackie, Jack says. He means the bald guy. We watched the credits to find out. We just had to know, who's that bald guy?

Oh! Here it comes! says Jorge in his whisper-yell. He can do it. I can do it. Jack can't. No way on him.

We brace ourselves. Can't wait.

Benny Hill slabber-smacks little Jackie on the head, bald head, smack-smack-smack.

There it is! I whisper-yell.

Jack yelled too, but WAY too loud. We CONSTANTLY gotta remind him.

Shhhh! You want 'em to find out THE TRUTH?!

What truth? he says.

That Benny Hill is Billy Mountain!

Oh, yeah, he says.

The dummy.

Truth itself is relative.

Only told by those who live.

Truth for one is but a lie.

Leaving some to wonder why.

To the victor goes the spoil.

The defeated only foil.

After all they are who write.

History for which we fight.

There is always truth in lie.

Like the birds are in the sky.

Lie alone cannot exist.

Because from the truth they twist.

There is but one truth in life.

One that will lead to no strife.

Everything is but a lie.

How I know that makes you sigh.

Truth is not something that's said.

Or carried along the dead.

Truth is something that you find.

In the recess of your mind.

You will not find complete truth.

Sitting in a diner booth.

For that truth cannot be found.

Until we are heaven-bound.

Humans lie it's their essence.

They won't have acquiescence.

So you ask me what is truth?

Like there is such thing as sooth.

For there is no truth from lie.

Even as they wander by.

Truth is something that you chose.

Based on voices of those whose.

Are the loudest.

I think you have misspoke. Pontus Pilate actually said, “What is truth?” and that is altogether a different question. By adding the article, you've merely kicked the can down the road, so let me explain.

Aristotle held that, “ If I say a thing is such and such, and it is, I have spoken the truth.” Correct in its way but facile, so please now imagine a table. All tables have a similar form and function, features that Wittgenstein might call “tableness.” Some tables of course will have more of these features than others, or as he put it, “A robin is more of a bird than an ostrich.” I understand that both have feathers, but think about birds and you'll get what he means.

Language contains only labels, pointing towards certain objects about which we have some consensus. Think about it. Verbs describe actions and nouns are concepts, and dictionaries merely exist to record the current consensus on meaning.

So if you're not sure what a table might be, look in Websters and you'll find a definition, but what does that have to say about truth. As Nietzsche put it, all language is metaphor, its various meanings more or less shared between the people who currently speak it. How close that sharing depends on what noun is in play. We can agree about tables, but what about the abstract concepts like love or justice? Your truth is true just for you? Let's leave Aristotle and his facts, returning instead to Pilate and what is truth?

In the material universe, there can only be probability. As Hume so cleverly asked, “How do we know the Sun will rise tomorrow?” It has such an excellent record of coming up, we can have expectations about tomorrow. That makes for strong probability, but is that the same as truth? The universe could end overnight, and no more Sun tomorrow. Our so-called scientific laws are only mathematical models approximating real world behaviours, eith some more accurate than others. As Box so beautifully put it, “All models are wrong but some are useful.”

The same is true on any empiricism. There are for example facts in history. The French Revolution started in 1789. That is a fact in evidence and clearly true, but what was the meaning of the French Revolution? Now we're inot opinion.

The Greeks believed there were absolutes. Truth, goodness and beauty they called the transcendentals, perfected outside our universe with only types and shadows seen within our world. To understand what this means, I suggest you google Botticelli's Venus Arising and study her eyes close up. A Neo-Platonist, he set out to capture Absolute Beauty, and you will find he got very close, her eyes are drawing you with a sense of home and safety, of peace not as we describe it (the absence of conflict) but more like the Jewish word shalom.

Of course, if Jesus was the Son of God, then Pilate was badly mistaken. God, if He exists at all, must surely exist beyond (before) our universe where there can be no atrophy or decay, or how would He be an absolute God, and such a place, being perfect, would have to feature perfect truth, goodness and beauty. Christ, by coming from there to here, expresses Botticelli's intention, the Absolute coming through the curtain to enter our time limited and decaying world. The, as Jesus pointed out, you would have truth, though expressed as a person and not an idea.

If however there is no God, then there can be no truth, only probability and what we hope are good enough approximations to keep us going, decay and death the only remaining certainties.