Loving A Peon Like Me
The emptiness of
elevated language
may well swell and
lull in such a fashion
that it’s pretty song
when entering most
ears. I can at least
affirm with regard to
what enters my own:
a flourish here and there
can flatter even the highest
plainspoken praise and give
me cause for quite a rise.
But that, I have to say is
not at all the case with you.
What isn’t straight as forward
on the line that could be drawn
as arrow from my mouth to you
goes in one ear (if that) and out
the other. Even the slightest of
embellishment somehow makes
its way through some sort of
invisible harvester to be shred
or shucked away before, it seems,
such decoration even leaves a well-
intended mouth. “A modifier,” I can
on the line that could be drawn
as arrow from my mouth to you
goes in one ear (if that) and out
the other. Even the slightest of
embellishment somehow makes
its way through some sort of
invisible harvester to be shred
or shucked away before, it seems,
such decoration even leaves a well-
intended mouth. “A modifier,” I can
hear you say, “however long or fancy-
looking on the page is only just as
good as the malleability of the spare
and solitary word that it was meant to
modify.” These so-called signifiers
are but to you insignificant, no matter
how elaborate, regardless of how many
syllables or how they might with such
dramatics trip sensationally off the tongue.
It is clear as clear can be that you believe
that to exhalate even once in such a hopeful
lexicographical aesthetic is time spent
irreversibly and irrevocably wasted. “Most
words, it’s true, are stubbornly stuck and
with being what and only what they are,
and that is where linguistic beauty lies; it’s
all the beauty words will ever need, if you
ask me,” I’ve often heard you say. This
does go on, and often, to this day. And
while you voice so confidently on about
how there’s never any need to doctor
elocution up, declaring what a most
impressive thing it is, indeed, to utter
with simplicity and never emit even a
single word that isn’t wholly necessary,
“Just tell it like it is. And on such matters
how, my dear, could anyone but concur?”
I smile as if to convey my absolute agree-
ment with his logic. But I’m barely there.
Because I’ve never seen a set of eyes upon
a so fine a face, and never held a hand
belonged to anything sweeter. And all
the while in awe of all of that, I wonder
how on earth I might begin to put into
any words at all (not to mention simpler
ones) the host of giddy transformations
that occur each time that line that’s formed
between us gets of any distance shorter. Or
how, more inexplicable still, those pleasant
feelings grow, exponentially, and into such
a word-defying roil, how inundated my entirety
is met with such a palpable euphoria. But this
I keep and to myself in greatest hopes to not
dissuade you of your presence. I’ve no mind
at all but to never speak without any super-
fluity and without an iota of abundance, to
the invaluable end of here with you remaining.
It is clear as clear can be that you believe
that to exhalate even once in such a hopeful
lexicographical aesthetic is time spent
irreversibly and irrevocably wasted. “Most
words, it’s true, are stubbornly stuck and
with being what and only what they are,
and that is where linguistic beauty lies; it’s
all the beauty words will ever need, if you
ask me,” I’ve often heard you say. This
does go on, and often, to this day. And
while you voice so confidently on about
how there’s never any need to doctor
elocution up, declaring what a most
impressive thing it is, indeed, to utter
with simplicity and never emit even a
single word that isn’t wholly necessary,
“Just tell it like it is. And on such matters
how, my dear, could anyone but concur?”
I smile as if to convey my absolute agree-
ment with his logic. But I’m barely there.
Because I’ve never seen a set of eyes upon
a so fine a face, and never held a hand
belonged to anything sweeter. And all
the while in awe of all of that, I wonder
how on earth I might begin to put into
any words at all (not to mention simpler
ones) the host of giddy transformations
that occur each time that line that’s formed
between us gets of any distance shorter. Or
how, more inexplicable still, those pleasant
feelings grow, exponentially, and into such
a word-defying roil, how inundated my entirety
is met with such a palpable euphoria. But this
I keep and to myself in greatest hopes to not
dissuade you of your presence. I’ve no mind
at all but to never speak without any super-
fluity and without an iota of abundance, to
the invaluable end of here with you remaining.
