Jeff Key

STEPS

"The light, acquiring luminous momentum, is caught in a brazen act of seduction

and scurries below the surface, attempting to avoid its own brilliance."

                                                                     —excerpt from STEPS by Jeff Key

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

                                                                                             —Winston Churchill

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.

                                                                                        —Elvis Presley

Truth is an elusive commodity.  Source, attitude, and perception color facts and populate print and speech with disparate realities. 

Steps comments on how these traits affect truth, influence thought, gather momentum, and descend into enigma.

How can 40% of Americans reject evolution and 50% reject the evidence that climate change is mostly due to human activity?  (Pew Research Center survey)

How could the Supreme Court in its decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission declare that corporations have the same rights as people and grant  corporations and labor unions the ability to spend unlimited funds for the election or defeat of a candidate?

How could Congress pass a major tax bill without hearings or a more thorough analysis of its economic impact in light of the report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that the bill would increase the national deficit by more than $1 trillion over the first 10 years.

As Kurt Andersen points out in his new book, Fantasyland—How America went Haywire,  “People tend to regard the Trump moment—this post-truth, alternative fact moment—as some inexplicable and crazy new American phenomenon. In fact what’s happening is just the ultimate extrapolation and expression of attitude and instincts that have made America exceptional for its entire history.”

Click on "read more" to see the text for STEPS

Steps 

A faint light, groping through the night, 

stumbles with hollow steps as it comes tapping down a narrow corridor.

Doors slam on the right,

windows snap shut on the left. 

A fragrant breeze moves in languid circles stealing through open cracks cut between time-

weathered slats.

Abandoned sleep is buried under thinly peeled layers of crystalized snow silently cleansing the landscape of brittle 

edges and uneven corners.

The light, acquiring luminous momentum, is caught in a brazen act 

of seduction and scurries below the surface, attempting to avoid 

its own brilliance.

Bound by a persistent shadow the faltering glow

calls for reason and demands a new trial.

Evidence, presented by the blue-grey breath of broken boughs,

is declared inadmissible.

Soft mounds rise to appeal apprehensive reflection.

Stones, alarmed by the urgency of a distant avalanche

burrow beneath crevices packed with arcane alibis.

The jury, hung between hoarfrost and oleander

declares a mistrial, promises an escape from a restless limbo, 

and departs in a cloud of contempt.

Circumspect blossoms, exposed in wanton undulation,

retreat behind rows of impatient buds 

struggling with the mask of vanity, 

punishing themselves for asking about the vagaries of the light, 

knowing that the answer will lead them to a further discourse 

on the termination of propriety and the origin of darkness.