Remainders

In the eons after we are gone
what will remain of us?
Certainly the obstinate secret
of Roman concrete will persist,
and the island of refuse in the pacific
will wander up the shiftless coastlines,
and armies of plastic soldiers
will occupy forests we once cut down.
But the beauty of our ideas, our selves,
our souls will have escaped into oblivion.
The leaves of books will not even rustle
in the wind, having carbonized
into something akin to coal.
And when alien footprints unsettle the soil
countless years from now,
they will not know that
The blackened squares they hold
in however many fingers they possess,
are mere fossils of
our sorrows and
our hopes,
our final unheard echo
in the caverns of existence.

The Gift of Language

All this talk--
"The pen is mightier than the sword"
"Words cut deep"
is bullshit.
The implication being
language is sleek,
silent, razored, arced.
In other words:
Elegant.
That language is the
sheen of quickening in
the shocked afterglow
of a knifing.
But in my experience
Language is blunt force trauma.
The bloody bludgeoning of hammers,
the splintering, wincing crack
of axes on the skull.
Language is clumsy.
Messy. Confusing.
intents and understandings
stand waving at each other awkwardly
across the street.
And when they do cross paths,
the results are so often
destructive.
Not lilting, dancing, whimsical.
Just devastating:
"We regret to inform"
"Sorry to say"
"I don't love you anymore"
Words leave marks.
Words leave scars.
Words leave wounds.
Language is violence.