Tribute to Language's Janitors
granularity to sweep into
the consonants' rock utterances.
Messy as sleet, transient as any
brief conversation with the acquaintances
who fritter into the lock box orbits
of our lives. Lubricants, the ooze
and squirm, the viscera . . . shadowed
makers of candles, saved
for darker nights imagined, when
the dinner guests have taken their fill
and wandered back to their own alleys,
their own small cases choked
with insomnia's mysteries.
What could a language be without
e, without i . . . without the challenge
to stasis this minority of letters offers?
Nomads on prairies miraged with literature's
hope for permanence, eyes alone holding
the improbable confluence of birds rising
against a stand of golden trees at the base
of mountains backlit by light sifted
through cloud . . . all that's imagined
left in the soft hollows everyone carries.
Something simple for a catalyst . . .
a pocket infused with something
crystalline, something ephemeral,
a melee of vowels. Little renegades
always on the way to a rally, to catch
the last act's echoes, to hand
anyone who pauses a flyer.
No thought given to the litter
of the expressionless blank they
guide us from. We never suspect
we may be blind. Witnesses with little
to describe, or convey. To sweep
the detritus from the halls takes
a good pair of o's bridging a br
with m. Thank you, vowels.
We almost didn't realize
the mess you've saved was ours.
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