Walter Holland
Cryptocracy
It was an age of redaction when truth
was stricken off the page and in a smear
of falsities the real became obscured; and
by repeated swipes, names, dates, deeds,
laws, hopes, and privacies were wholly
blotted out, summarily erased by design.
To obfuscate replaced the call to reason.
A strange time, eclipsing the surety of
principle and scientific proof;
making illegible what’s culpable; indecipherable the logical, concealing what’s deceitful, and constantly parsing what’s left; holding the unclear to the light, while seeking the invisible beneath the deflection; the hard, cold residue of underlying fact, the absence and gaps of misleading syntax so elliptical, insoluble, and masked. A disappearance that blindfolds the mind, like
dissidents gone missing in the black of night
who can’t read what they’re forced to sign.
Walter Holland, PhD, is the author of three books of poetry: A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (Magic City Press, 1992), Transatlantic (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), and Circuit(Chelsea Station Editions, 2010) as well as a novel, The March (Masquerade Books, 1996 and Chelsea Station Editions 2011). His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, HazMat, Redivider, Rhino, and other journals and anthologies. He writes book reviews for LambdaLiterary.org and Pleiades. Follow him at: walterhollandwriter.com.
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