WORDS

I stumbled across a poem I wrote almost 18 years ago, when I was pregnant with my oldest son, and wanted to share it with my readers.

WORDS
I keep strange bedfellows.
Words are my lovers.
Words embrace me,
and yet they push me away.
They are my terror,
and they are my passion.
Weeping, crying,
softly wetting the sheets with
the salt of my soul…
I want to be a vampire…
I want to be a child…
I want to be everything,
and yet I am nothing.
The music plays in the harmony of the words.
They have a rhythm,
a cadence,
a tone,
a way of running away with themselves,
never letting you catch up to them until it’s too late,
and they’ve been spoken
shouted
screamed
cried
said
whispered
So many ways to say the simple things,
yet no way at all.
What is it that dreams are made of?
Words.
Thoughts are images,
images are bred from words.
Words nullify me.
I want to own the words
I want to use the words
I want the words to lay with me,
caress me,
be me…
It’s late…
I sleep poorly alone,
but there is nobody here.
Everyone who has ever lain with me has succumbed
to the words.
The evil
vile
nasty
perfect
words.
One word
holds such perfect beauty
within its letters
and yet I see ugliness
disease
decay
rot
everything I detest
is held all at once
within a word
a name
a sound
a song
a poem
a story
a blurb
What is the difference
between now and forever?
What is the meaning
of love gone sour?
Can hate and love exist in the same place?
Aberration of nature,
describable only by words.
Something doesn’t cut it.
Something won’t give.
I can’t tell you what it is.
I can’t explain it to you.
Words betray me
and my tongue.
I’m left incapable of communication
without words.
And I can’t write a poem without words,
so instead I write a poem about words,
and wish words didn’t exist…

Copyright © 02/26/01