no more BIG WORDS

give them up

take them out of your bag
and hang them up to dry
and die

we need the dance of good and bad
with all its twists and feints
to be shown to us as a chart
of small and long steps
that march back and forth
to a beat that drags and then speeds up
for that is the one way
we will learn it
and then we can work
to try and make it smooth
and straight

we need the arc of love
to be drawn in dots and lines
that curve and halt
roll and drop back
so that we can take hold
of the long view
and not be slaves
to the past wreck of any one time
when it did not come out as we
had planned

give up
your rotted
flowered and sickly fragrant
overextended vocabulary
your
adoration of complication
in pursuit of explication
of creation’s obfuscation

phew!

it is all just so much spit on the tongue

this world you claim to know
so well you can write of it
is not the world
we were asked to show
for all to see and hang
upon

the rules that say
it must be so are
too glib to be true

you have lost the thread
of how we were meant to run
this race
have made a choice
to paint your names
in truth’s place
and made them
ten times the size
of what is in fact there

a word to the wise
is all we need
wise words are small words
keys
for locks
not made for codes and
traps

so
give the huge words up
and be brief when you sit
with pen to page

live for the short road
and for praise
of what is found
when the Big Words
are cut down
to size

NOTE: Rough recording of this up on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown