Vernacular
The words you’re born with fall.
Flood wet from that womb where they, so benignly,
circled you alongside the dawn of your animation.
Sharp edges of letters cut;
letter T crossed, letter I
smacks with anticipation of your shaking hands
holding them, holding your pen.
They spill, lost, between your crooked fingers
as an offering of peace
a trophy of hate.
Burning the libraries of your foes,
Swallowing their Latin and lore.
We pushed typewriters into every babbling brook,
Your abhorrence grinning, teeth like keys.
The poet
Knows cruelty.
I never held one parlance close.
You never liked the double agent in me.
The pages you ate still flutter in your stomach,
an aftertaste of tinny
artistic
mistrust.
You fling your consonants,
drop your vowels like names from your pencil,
yellow paper smoking,
eraser worn, graphite torn.
You throw spears of the words you’re born with;
I catch your linguistic fallout in water
to wash away
everything you wrote.
Flood wet from that womb where they, so benignly,
circled you alongside the dawn of your animation.
Sharp edges of letters cut;
letter T crossed, letter I
smacks with anticipation of your shaking hands
holding them, holding your pen.
They spill, lost, between your crooked fingers
as an offering of peace
a trophy of hate.
Burning the libraries of your foes,
Swallowing their Latin and lore.
We pushed typewriters into every babbling brook,
Your abhorrence grinning, teeth like keys.
The poet
Knows cruelty.
I never held one parlance close.
You never liked the double agent in me.
The pages you ate still flutter in your stomach,
an aftertaste of tinny
artistic
mistrust.
You fling your consonants,
drop your vowels like names from your pencil,
yellow paper smoking,
eraser worn, graphite torn.
You throw spears of the words you’re born with;
I catch your linguistic fallout in water
to wash away
everything you wrote.