Lifetimes spent refining action from intention.

While attitudes of platitude weld blinkers to perception,

Conception torn, each notion born, projected with invention

Meets an ending while resenting lack of deeper comprehension.

Words earned. Word learned. Words spurned. Words turned.

Until ego composed, we transpose and enthrone aloft

Our steeped scripted slabs, peering down from atop,

Each manmade island.

Each handheld siren.

Broadcasting Trojan omens born of slogans.

Aeolian, we drift upon an ocean of devotion.

See

 First we met what it was just ‘to be’. We three.

Perched on 1/4 size chairs in port-a-cabins, confined by concrete playgrounds.

Perceptions defined and refined, re-assigned and pinned fluttering to the page.

Then carried home. Each hoisted trophy earned in solitary toil

Re-joisted fame filled galleries on cold white frigid doors.

We earned the words for feelings, we learned the words for words.

We learned the words for the words that describe the words

And with each verbal turd

We gradually discerned;

your words

from

My words

from

his words

from

her words

from

our words

from

their words

from

THE word.

But all those words are worlds.

And all those worlds have sides

That slip so far from senses

as to become galaxies of their own invention.

And we, sensing the gravity of vernacular smother veracity

Slip slumbering into an ecosystem of terms conditional,

Sullen pyres to the permissible.

Plundering meanings from feelings,

Bystanders lost in our own dealings.

Watching the infinite sift through a billion funnels of perception;

desert dry of meaning, yet drowning in distinction.

But still,

Every now and then.

I do catch a glimpse.

An occasional hint, of

a kinda coda.

A sliver of the real.

A flash of being.

A fleeting ephemeral pause.

And each precious breach affords

a momentary door

An un-pawled perception.

And if I further still, with mind recalled and heart withdrawn

I gain just what it is.

To see with mine own eyes.

Tonight I stumble on

“the voice as an instrument”

Yet, even as I write these words, I feel

This process of recounting,

Steal

From

Me

So, I stop.

Lest I cease

to be.

© Copyright 2020 Howard Walmsley