Words

Run your finger down this page. Don’t fear it

the way you have feared others like it;

as if the barbed wire hook of ‘h’

or an unforgiving shard of ‘v’ could slice

your hand open

on a whim.

Even the language of language drops anchor,

a one-vessel panic attack.

You gaze down at them:

affricatives a rattling admonition

from a far-off fleet,

aspirates the gasp of a drowning woman

as waves do the word’s bidding.

The bookshelf is a row of perfect-bound landmines,

spine-brassed with the names of those already fallen,

hearts cut out in their prime

by the mechanical silence of full stop after

full stop.

Semi-colons like spent casings.

The only canon you do not fear

is that tight, trusted band of brothers

numbering only in their hundreds:

enough nouns hammered into the hard earth,

reliable, unchanging

(a spade always was a spade)

with enough capricious verbs to rope a corral

and keep you from escaping.

Yes, for you words are violence,

because words lead unquestioningly

to thoughts.

And thoughts are black, bloody murder.