Word Crimes and Punishment

When words are not enough

or too much 

and their verticality bends

into an arrowhead of retribution

when the maladies of incoherence 

exact a price for a pierced cure

that digs deep into the heart of narration

and as bloodlines eject

the ineptitudes of love

the baby words 

with the babble-bathed waters 

dirtied in the necessary intercourse

of the lightest touch

on the finest handkerchief ,

when words are not enough

and too much

and the rent-collectors 

come charging 

for helpless trespasses 

those rendered naked 

must go

must go far away

to an ancient tree

and a blue mountain 

where it is said gather on certain dawns

that will not freeze

and nights that will not end

the poets from a different century

who recite in a thankfully foreign tongue

the poetry of silence 

made of all ignorances 

and thus clothe 

but barely so

the uncouth, imprudent men

who once dared to speak 

and desecrate thereby

the holy lands of love.