a bar by another other name would taste as sweet in poetry

you know how the first time
someone sees a Baby Ruth bar
they assume it must be named
after baseball star Babe Ruth
then someone speaks up and says
“well actually it’s named after
a former president’s daughter”
and the conversation just
ends there with someone
smug in their knowledge?

but it wasn’t named after
Grover Cleveland’s daughter
who was, like, in her thirties
when that candy was invented
it really was named as such to
cash in on George Herman Ruth

someone at Big Candy smartly
lawyered up and concocted that
fake story to protect his boss
from some well-deserved lawsuit
then promoted the hell out of it
until one hundred odd years later
it become the “secret truth” for
pedants to use to shoot down
that common sense explanation
reveling in their replication
of counterfactual triviality

that’s what
our history is
that’s what all
human history is

narratives that
keep the engines
running reiterated
by people who need
fake stories to
justify their
contradictions
make them feel
whole in the
face of this
broken life

they’ll tell themselves
the world is actually flat
the seas aren’t really rising
how Columbus sailed the ocean blue
a saintly pioneer in fourteen ninety-two
if it will make them feel superior
to other human being and get them
a Monday off work in grim October

the story of the Baby Ruth
is the story of the human race
writ tiny on a plastic wrapper
that will never ever decompose
in a dump on the poor side of town

we will believe
what we are told
if it will make us
feel almost whole
and if there’s money
in it for someone who
got their own already
well then, hell
slap it on a billboard too
from coast to coast
of oceans blue