Words

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will give account on the day of  judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”   Matthew 12:34-37

when it comes to words,

it has always been all or nothing,

words have been my best friends,

my only companions, my slaves,

my sluts, my bitches,

my lovers, my fantasies,

my obsessions, my masters;

my salvation;

I have used words like a healing salve,

spreading them like butter on

unseen cuts and gashes,

until there was nothing left,

a silent barrier behind which

I could bury all the loneliness and tears;

words have been there when there

was nothing else;

words should not be wasted

on summer roofing jobs or dead

Italian uncles, but then one mfa

is worth about 2 nights in the gutter,

following 5 day benders you can

barely remember, or one week in a

cock-roach infested hotel,

with rats so big they stand on their hind legs,

begging like trained circus seals,

all the while daring you to do

something about it,

all the while knowing you won’t,

it’s then you understand words

you never knew existed,

words you will never learn at Harvard,

or Princeton, or Vassar,

as you slowly sip a bottle of Wild Irish Rose,

or Thunderbird or Mad Dog;

I have used words to describe

every act of perversion, every degradation,

every dark empty thought existing

with the human soul;

so who am I to judge?

words are clay in the hands

of a skilled artist,

waiting to be sculpted into an

unknown beauty that defies description,

they are the face of a tragic cruelty,

beyond the limits our relatively simple minds

can even begin to fathom;

words are nothing, words are everything,

by your words you will be condemned,

by your words you will be freed;

choose your words

wisely.

.

.