James R. Whitley

Beyond Semantics

And this just in
from the tarnished world
                                     of disenchantment:
desolation has its own abrasive language— 

the recurrent awestruck vowels and clipped syntax,
the frequent use of guttural fricatives
                                     and awkward plosives,
the wealth of synonyms for the adjective hollow.

Recast in this draconian linguistics,
the word tomorrow sounds like
the insignificant thud of a dying mayfly
                         collapsing into a puddle of mud,

the question Where am I? becomes
a muffled plea of a child choking on a cherry pit,
the verb to trust is a few spare syllables
                                                  of freezing water.

Translated,
your name is an illusion
                       being perforated and scored,
a tortured string of successive glottal stops.

And what might be mistaken for nightly mewling
emanating from my sullen bedroom
is actually the sincerest vesper, replete
with its own shaky optimism and martyred light.