Parsing Thoughts

Only a few birds are still speaking

the troubled ones, I think, 

as this dusk settles to dark 

and I am left
to look about aimlessly 

and emptily seeking what can be said

for purchase against the unsayable.

And as I might attack a block of ice 

with pick and mallet 

I prize apart the compressed, 

the mass of my obdurate brain,

picking loose the skein of thoughts 

before compressing them anew, condensing,

distilling phrases to word.

Fear

Anger

Pain

Sin

God

My tragic capacity for self-deception 

with the limitation of language,

a driven force required 

to overcome these mantras,

I now see my words a simple finger 

pointing to the moon,

not the moon itself 

and the mallet life's strongest force,

Love