Poetry

Brian Wertheim photo

By

Howard Brown

The Inherent Fallacy of Political Dialogue

You’re talking politics with a friend,

you see an issue one way, he disagrees,

each clinging passionately to their own

take on the truth.

And as the temperature of the conversation

rises, invective begins to fly:  fool, bigot,

deplorable, and worse, you shout back

and forth in righteous indignation.  

Facts are facts, but let’s face it; perception

of those facts is something else altogether,

seasoned as it is with a healthy dose of

myopia.

So, right, left or center, your rhetoric is

invariably tainted by delusion and thus,

as Shakespeare would have dubbed it,

full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Howard Brown

Howard Brown is a poet and writer who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Lookout Mountain. His poetry has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Super Highway, Old Hickory Review, Lone Stars Magazine and Blue Collar Review. In 2012, he published a collection of poems entitled “The Gossamer Nature of Random Things.” His poem “Pariah” placed first in the poetry division of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition sponsored by Mississippi’s Tallahatchie Riverfest. He has published short fiction in Louisiana Literature, F**k Fiction, Crack the Spine, Pulpwood Fiction, Extract(s), Gloom Cupboard and Full Of Crow.