Tag Archives: hate speech

We had words

Big words

Words with sharp consonants

Barbed hooks that tear the soft flesh out of your throat

Words that fly out of your mouth and circle overhead like seagulls

Who feast on binscraps and bombard sidewalkers with unwelcome splats

Words

We had words

Eye popping vein throbbing temperature rising words

Words that ricochet against the walls of your closed mind

Like the deathlead heat of a thousand rounds

We had words

Words that are furyflung and meant to wound

Words that don’t listen for responses

Carpet bombs that blow conversations into smithereens

Words that thrust and parry

Pointed words that slip deep into unarmoured flesh aiming for the heart

We had words all right

But it’s not all

And it certainly isn’t right

Those words were poisoned

Toxic words

Words that initiate chronic conditions

Flesh eating words

Whose wounds grow larger instead of smaller

Never scabbing over with the promise of a new thin skin

But become suppurating angry ulcers

And the only treatment is amputation or exile

So just saying that we had words

Is a little like saying a rape victim had sex

Those words had us when we had them

Because sometimes words do become flesh

Bleeding, infected, painful and mortified

If I could take them back I would

And maybe it would have been better to cover my ears

Walk away in retreat

But we had words

 

David Trudel  ©  2013