language should be unnecessary, toxic even,
bile dripping off our tongues.
what is the purpose of an artifice like language,
a combination of sounds strung syntactically into
what we call sentences and falsely believe
hold meaning that no one will ever misinterpret.
I was born without a voice.
to not speak as a child is to be labeled as shy,
pinned like a butterfly to the sidewalk pavement
while others draw your outline in chalk.
you try to call out, but there is a silence that follows,
as if there is a cloud clogging your throat.
if mis-communication is all words can offer,
then why even attempt to make sense with them?
why not saddle elephants like spoons brimming with leather coffee?
there are professors who will stand before you
lifting lofty words to the heavens
building temples out of blocks of dictionaries
pontificating their conjectures sans plebeian verbiage
but in the end, saying nothing.
each attempt to elucidate a notion implodes,
the listener waiting eagerly for the speaker to finish
so he too can show what words he knows.
saying absolutely nothing, meaning nothing, signifying nothing.
there is a confusion less telling than silence
and that is the noise of trying to say something
because there is pain in attempting to describe humans
(even the taste of pineapple)
in words
that seem to fail, always fail.
in fact, there is only one language
which each person understands and that
is silence.
