Your Truth Is Not My Truth

David Burn
2 min readMar 20, 2024
“TRUE,” charcoal, watercolor, and acrylic by David Burn

Let’s inspect the damage
We’ve mangled facts and destroyed
What little truth was left in the system

Your truth is no longer my truth
My truth is raw and unfiltered
Your truth is processed and inspected by the state

Words like weights
First uttered by the man find a new home in you
That poison gas now passes through your thin lips

Hard words land roughly on unsuspecting ears
Children of democratic norms are on the run
Hate Street is now Main Street

Your truth is spiked
My truth is tempered
Your truth smells like turpentine

My truth is a fireball
Your truth flows like sewage
My truth comes in waves

You heard it at work
I heard it on the X
Truth doesn’t hang in the balance

Truth is hanging from the media’s noose
Left to dangle in the square
Another torn flag of a defeated nation

There’s no going home from this wordy war
We live in zones between black and white
My truth breaks the silence

Your truth is deafening
Your truth is not my truth
Why don’t we take it outside?

Why don’t we plant it
And watch it grow like kudzu
In the black soils of the the Old South?

Before the land could be worked by slaves
It had to be taken from Indians
All boundaries wiped from the map

Blink and you’re no longer in control
Truth isn’t something you own
It stands alone

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