POETRY: The Liar’s Psalm—Repentance by Andrew Hudgins

I repent the actual. It has never got me anywhere. It is nothing against principalities, against powers. My father will die and I will carry on. I dread his death more than mine because it will come sooner—knowledge I repent. In lies he will outlive the liar. And that’s me. The lie itself will carry on, is itself a child, a separate life, a blow against the gods of objects. Who are not happy with me or with their densities. They are not worth their flawed kingdoms. And neither do I love them. They are dangerous. They are too stupid to be insignificant, too proud of their ability to blister my hands and make them raw. I repent letting them, and I repent logic, which has no god: it will do anything, it will go anywhere. Tell it your destination and it will take you there. A taxi. This is the nature of evidence: how could you prove the meat you ate last night wasn’t horse meat, goat flesh, or something I had, the night before, sliced from my thighs? Or that it was meat at all? Or that you ate? There is no bottom to what we will believe, [...]