言 Yan (Spoken Word)

The spoken word reveals itself ‒

on whiteboards, scrawled quickly, in ink

Three lines, a box, and a smudge; nothing more

Do words truly exude themselves

up-and-out from our bodies into the grasping ether

so emboldened and black, so smoothened, untremulous with a dancing eye

Do they truly embrace the air; gleeful soldiers home from war

to sweep the laughing world from its feet

and disappear into black-and-white anonymity?

Animated as they are ‒ surely they would not move so straight

Do not the creatures of nature dance with their atmosphere-

a fish does not swim like a bullet ‒ it waltzes through the water

When primal things were the only things ‒ water, fire, me, you

When words were only ever aloud ‒ did they still slip away

battered by tidelines like hapless fry

For a word is not a line; it is the smudge in-between

an unknown splotch, lost through syntax and centuries

of noise ‒ will we ever learn to dance again with our silent, hungry partner?