Then there are times

When thoughts find no words.

Like misbegotten embryos, sans

Lips that form, eyes that see,

Fingers that point,

Their life tosses liquid in a miasma,

Unable to shape the days to come.

When that which is said is said often,

Remains in effect unsaid,

Like rain that falls incessant

Far away from sight or hearing.

When was the last you heard

What I said, insistent in my

Peroration?

Or if you did, it did not show

In how your pupils moved

Or your head nodded.

Nothing in the stance of your

Movement out of your chair

Suggested you heard what I said.

And that man there,

The everywhere man,

Set to remake the world after

His own visage, he hears

No words but his own.

How often I have spoken to him,

Words loaded with yield,

But fallen on a barren field.

What words are left us  now

Are from hand to mouth, like

Picking up the cup and saucer

After the tea is done,

Renewable when somebody rings

The bell and you ask ‘who can it be?’

In the world out of place

With our words, we cannot

Decipher the smart logos

And the grunts of digital joy

That make up now for words.

Our words only capture

Our wordlessness, till some maverick

Who still reads a newspaper comes visiting

For an hour or two of mouthful of words—

Then for a brief parole, we fly like caged birds,

Only to sink back into the captivity

Of thoughts without words,

Smoothing out the corner

of the bedspread that gives

us respite from unsaid words.

---