Tag Archives: paradigms

My Cain and Abel are my words

Battling for the give and take of perception

They circle themselves

Poised to lash out or swiftly defend

I have used words as shields

I have hidden behind their illusion

Used the ambiguity of meaning and intent

To prevaricate and dissemble

Not from deviousness

But unconsciously

Or to mask my own fear and insecurity

 

Yet I find great joy in words

They are my playground and delight

Dancing meaning into dialogue

Reinventing clouds into rain

Or mining seams of elemental truth

I turn words into bouquets

Or scrawl them on signposts and sidewalks

Like some mad tagger

Illuminating the gray sameness

Of blank canvasses at midnight

 

Eventually the words turn me

Into a question

That I cannot answer

Feeling walled in

By the discreteness of each definition

Stamped out by our shared accommodation of

Conventional language

Which isn’t drunken shouts of expense account delegates

But a common delusion

That we can trade perceptions

Without trading our inner selves

Uncentering from each private strand of individuality

Into some union of sameness

Believing that words can be shared with exactitude

Forgetting the magical glow of transitory sunsets

And how impossible it is to grasp that moment

Let alone use words to describe the indescribable

 

 

David Trudel    © 2013