Word Dogs

Thoughts proportioned in small words
carefully aligned but mispronounced
impaired and glaring.

Awaken, frostily and without haste
the perfect angle of carom
like an echo, always correct.

But a flash flood of misguided ink
scrubs away intention and
scatters topsoil in the underbrush
tin cans and roots dangling
fathoms of iron left to cool
all of it: gone.

Calm propagation
in the company of skulls
and the morning thrush
and the nervous rustling of squirrels
this quiet is just an absence of noise
even the jet airplane, a misguided
brush stroke in ashy gray
lends its signature to the harmony.

But here come the automobiles
distant electronic beats
and the first arguments of the day.

What worlds we awaken
when the first twig snaps.

The war is coming, she says,
but sleep a while longer.
I’ll keep my eye on things.

And rain falls like a lottery
then stops.

Slumber’s aphrodesiac
now taunting peril.

We’d better get back
to the symbology and grammar
the time for dreaming is done.

The din of engines will overlap
ceaselessly, until nightfall.

Come now, boy, war is upon us.

The flies will be buzzing
gorged and tireless
and you ought not kill them
any more readily
than they ought kill you.

Wake now, the time for sleeping is done.