How strange to estrange ourselves from the wordWhen needed most at millennium’s end, The world gone too post-modern to denote
As nugget-gold, divine, or absolute; So truth is relative and more defined
To suit the rival disciplines, as in Philosophical truths of academe,
Socratic and accredited, which mean Nothing at all, tantamount to tabloid
Truths or CNN’s misnomer "fact·oid," Which Mailer knows is "void of fact" and blank
As election-year truths of party plank, Newt ones with America, or gospel
Truths of Swaggart and half-ones of Montel, The syndicated truths of Oprah clones
Or Limbaugh and his legions, call-in drones, Oxymorons of truth like canned applause,
Truth in advertising, disclosure laws, The rhetorical truths of MLA
So similar to Simpson’s DNA Odds of accuracy, the truth serums,
Lie detectors, untestable quantum Ones of chaos, black hole, and superstring,
The random truths of Darwin or Big Bang, The uppercase Truths of poem and sage,
And lowercase ones of genome and judge— All become obscurer now but equal
To truth’s opposites when no one tell Hype from myth, rumor from mill, news from source,
Fashion from art, and fiction from science.
Copyright © 2000 Michael Bugeja