7.1.16

Weekend words for your long holiday weekend.

6-22-16

I write because I do not fight.

Surrounded by sound, we are spoken at

From every flat surface.

Their supplications shouted--

‘What you don’t know may harm you!’--

Their eyes drill, while the folds of their faces

Splash plosive platitudes,

Abhorring silence that comes within the vacuum.

Paper is crushed.

With combustions that make chads,

Braille erupts,

(If we can close our eyes enough to see it)

Words sprout amidst the paper’s teeth.

How muddy the pen, precarious the profession;

Weak but chivalric,

I go to work wearing armor padded with headlines,

My gambeson quilted with unread inches.

I could be the neck that steers the talking heads,

Sculpt them with my stylus,

Intoxicated with ink’s anonymous awesome power.

What else is there? Stories told by mouth or stories written down

In varying degrees of poison.

The truth makes you feel ill,

The sweet lies maybe make you feel better,

No option for “not to feel”: the yawning blank,

The unclassified, ready to consume.