Manufactured Minutes

Events pressed deep into a vice,
squeezed of facts and truths,
then covered with a flow of ink
as history is cranked out in precise definition,
not by what happened,
but by the wheels in a mind.

It is manufactured moments
massaged and manipulated
into a fairy tale and fantasy
where what is preserved
seldom agrees with what happened.

Yet, the engine of invention
races just the same,
to make any period of life
any era that has drifted by,
the nostalgic tone of cherished tradition
while villains become like gods
and martyrs didn’t exist.

In a book they look so polished,
grammar and spelling
are skillfully done by the editor
who serves as robot to the cause
for preserving some image
even if reality cast it
with a much darker pallor
than the haloed and honeyed complexion
carefully crafted by a revisionist quill
so the past looks soft and endearing.