The Sick Poet

He lay in his bed of words

Dying of meaning

The pages of a rhyming dictionary

Torn out, shredded and stuffed

Into a bag that he uses as a pillow

To rest a head bereft of connections

To his senses and his experience

He rarely used a rhyme anyway

Just when the time was right

“No rhyme before its time!”

He jokes to his Muse

Who doesn't get it.

Now every word seems like “orange”.

His hand shakes barely holding a pen

Scratching the pad like a car in a skid

It's his last sheet of paper

Now the pen runs dry

But it doesn't seem to matter

He has nothing to write anyway.

Words Without Words

He wore a perfect blindfold-- a bleak mask

For an elected blindness not to see

A thing, or any one, including their

Words to read that could be misleading him.

Words can deceive, even start bloody wars.

He began scrubbing his memory of language--

Thought symbols he used to speak, hear, read

And write... they only feed on themselves

Like cannibals hungry for glib answers

From his gut, twisted by feckless questions.

Now he hears language sounds that mean nothing,

Like the sharp commands heard by wild dogs

Unleashed by scarecrows that they ignore.

He hears rushes of the wind, cicadas,

Thunder, and waves repeating restful

Endings upon sandy shores, music heard--

Unspoken things like that, unwritten, move

On, to forget without traces so he'll be ready

To hear wondrous things as they are just born.

He might hear tandem footsteps on the sand,

On grass, moving closer, moving away...

Stopping, silence-- a real moment simmers...

He listens as the quiet of someone there

Brings their world so near to him without a word.

He feels her breathe without symbolic clutter.

He learns to know her, who she really is.

Maybe now he'll take the mask from his eyes.