Words worth

It’s a guessing game with you and I
A potluck chance for what comes by, 
Up and down and round the bend
To pause for breath will be my end;
If only I were quicker, slicker; fast,
If only you would let me past,
It’s a race of muscle and of neuron
No longer things I do depend on,
Misfiring, tiring, perspiring too
It’s out with old and in with the new;
In the blink of an eye a thought is lost
Our lives are risked on benefits’ cost;

If only you could wait for me,
If only the things I would foresee
To warn you of what futures bring
To save you from life’s promised sting;
For my thousand breaths that go unheard
If only you would think one not absurd;
If only you could be wiser now
But time herself will not allow;
There are no magic words or phrase,
Although I’ve tried a thousand ways,
To conjure up a smoother road
And bargain for you a lighter load;
If only - is this moment’s careless curse
We were who we are, both better and worse.

Word Files

Hit the backspace key and delete
The proportional font upon this sheet,
Change to another size and style
Justify the text and save the file.

Export an image for all to see
Blur the edges, by degree
Saturate the colours pallid
Crop and brighten out the palette.

Hit the backspace key and delete
The words that twist upon your sheets,
Correct your imperfect style and size
Justify your words and lies.

Merge yourself and agree,
Sharpen your edges, for those who see
Contrast yourself against the grey
And save it up for a rainy day.

Spaced out along the line
Crammed together and out of time,
Capitalize, and underline the words
As favourites shared within the herd.

Chatter Matters

One day I’ll run out of words,
It’s been a life sentence
Of stops and starts and pregnant pauses,
Waiting for your replies;
One day I’ll have nothing left to say,
Will you empty the silence,
Cramming the air around us
With syllables in gossipy strings
And thoughtless consonants kissing
Up to opinionated vowels?
The shine’s rubbing off the gilded quiet
I crave the sound of substance,
The noisy notes of the story we share;
I’ll drop the weight of a glottal stop
And swallow the taste of your name
Catching my throat on the curlicues
Of uncoiling, unspoken sound bites;
Will you put your lips to mine
And breathe in my promised words?
One day

Vanish

The clock has been set,
Run the numbers round and round
Sound the alarm,
That buzzer’s going beep
Two years from now,
It’s in the cards, spread in silk
And spray painted on that wall
Shadowing your favourite walk,
One word higher than anyone could reach
Vanish –
Tacit permission scratches out from
Your pen, the lines between are empty
No one survives in a vacuum,
You’re doing your best to fill out
The forms you’ve taken,
Is it good, is it bad?
The clock counting down doesn’t
Tick, it flickers red, red digits
Silently reshape themselves,
You would do the same
Twist and torque until you can secrete
Yourself between the typeset, proportional
To your words, the osmosis of syllables
Into dead space, forging malleable allusions
Onto blank relief;
The clock won’t tick and it won’t stop,
They’ll mourn you when you’ve gone
Beat their breasts and wail your praises
Deaf and dumb, even though they pore over
The letters you left etched behind every
Closed door and unturned stone,
You served them notice, every other word
Spelling out your ideations,
That alarm’s going to ring;
Babies should be held, pressed to warm caring skin
They fail in their efforts
To thrive, if held at arm’s length,
Our physicality is the catalyst that spins
Them into someone real, whole
Alive, you hold the world at an arm’s length,
In the other hand, skin stretched over knuckles
You clutch your pen tight by your heart
That flickers red, red slowing down
Blotted over and over until the words
Run together and become the same string,
A net of gnarled knots that cinch tighter
With every loop and whorl
You set down what you know,
If only the clock would tick, tock
Giving rhythm to your final beat
Drumming your fingers, waiting to
Sound the alarm –
Time’s up.

Biopsy

Hobble my tongue
With your scalpel sharp,
Excise the words
That leave a mark,
Stitch the wound
With plastic thread
Tight to seal
The bleeding edge,
Discard the flesh
That so offends,
Offer me promises
To make amends,
My healing tissues
Pull into scars
To slur my speech
Into lisping parse,
I’ll learn to twist
My thoughts to sound
And you’ll run each
Vowel into the ground
And say you couldn’t hear
The words that always
Used to be so clear.

Dial Tone.

He told her over the telephone,
Each word on its own
Lacking any strength,
Sequentially strung –
A devastating sentence
Of sharpened syllables,
Piercing her heart
Each bead of blood small,
Falling together emptying
Her of the present and future, tense –
He never took back the words
And the blood pools under her skin.