You, who use these symbols.
These words.
You bandy these symbols about.
Your words.

You speak, as though you know
Of what it is you speak.
And you miss the symbols, here,
Awake on the page, with intent.

You are warned.
There are no lies
To offer you your way out
And still, but not of mind, you talk.

The world is full of symbols
Which we mean to represent reality,
To coax our feeble, closing minds
Toward ideas of substance and graft.

Toward some knowledge,
Of power and reason.
Of truth and beauty.
Of you and me.

Of reality, a world built on dreams
In dust and abandoned,
And of rust and corrosion.
Of places vacated, deserted, unseen
and lives yet unlived and undreamed.

You, who use these words,
Know not why you speak nor what of.
Bandying around words,
Filling time and space and emptying hearts.

And at the same time
Occupying minds of others
With drivel and nonsense
Of an unforeseen consequence.

Yet you are, and remain, owner
Of folklore and song,
Of art and of games.
Of news of another country; the past.

So where is it written we must indulge dross
saying nought, sharing light with none?
No advice of common use
nor warnings of war.


© scribler 2011