Articulation

The inception is an image.

Sparks in synapses, implosion of the heart,

some flowing gash in the soul.

The inception is an idea.

Floating dust in the garden where truth lives

until caught by flashlight, parasitic,

absorbed through the flesh of fingertips,

travelling up the arm like a heart attack

the pain of learning that articulation is not easy

it eats beasts from the inside

while they reach for dying sounds

eyes rolling back with the effort.

It scratches guts and gullet getting to the mouth,

but doesn’t always make it past the lips.

 

Words have their own war-

shields and swords and sledgehammers,

club, bow, morning star,

spear

         spear

                    spear

“What’s the synonym for spear?!”

 

We’ll have to send her out unarmed,

a battle for her right to escape,

to become a tangible weapon,

dress her up in chainmail so they can’t hurt her,

give her an axe, see if they come close,

she clings to the front teeth but the world sucks her out

simply uttered virgin, obliterated warrior.

Conversation is a killer.

 

Sometimes things shouldn’t be said out loud.

Feel the spark of an image and pick up a pen,

see the dust of ideas and tap a few keys.

Blank pages have no gavel,

paper has no mind of its own,

it offers alphabets formed with a dancing hand

back to the brain,

it drowns ink in its bleached sea.

 

Articulation is not easy.

It knows the struggle of meaning

how there is never one way to not know the answer,

how the truth is a bunch of broken lies,

glass slipper shards wedged in the head,

how all the glittering snowflakes

cannot embellish a cloudy metaphor.

 

The beginning of thought must chase its own tail,

sit, panting and thirsty, think what to say.

Nourish it.

Feed the cells maturing it to sense.

“When will the sounds come?”

When they are ready.

Do not let whispers make dark shapes of doubt.

“When will the words come?”

They’re already there.

Pick them out.

Put them in the right order.

There is nothing but muteness until you try.