pinky promise

we've forgotten our mortality
our impulse to smile at *blooms
we've stared at childhood photographs
and wondered why we look so angry

the art of fault and denial are synonymous
we've stopped speaking in hopes that silence really does
speak volumes,
our bodies could fell, cracked down like oak and our voices
remain like cocoons, papery whispers swathed in duff,
still breathlessly prating, foolish and juvenile.

which goes to say-- our thoughts
far procede the vessel, would last beyond our
deaths and ancestry--

i once spoke about anger being passed down
through the blood of irishmen - who long held the
propensity to bar fight and brawl
long standing feuds poured from mouth to mouth
downriver, across the gap, occasionally skipping a generation
the woes of our fathers are dead languages that we keep--
tongues we deliver on our own

we lash out and are our mothers
or laugh and see our fathers
never quite our own until burgeoning, and not even that --
not all of us bloom, some of us violently tear away
break the root and toss ourselves among the rocks
wilted but brilliantly colored  
       desperate to
                   learn how to speak.