by James Gage
Word is the best
four-letter word
of them all—
the most effective
and least obscene.
I prefer the sound
of human voices speaking
with one another
with the gift of our forebears:
the bilabial smacks
and glottal stops,
the carefully wrought thoughts
in place of haste
or wind-drift spasms.
Our words are aural evidence
of true evolution
beyond the harnessing of fire
or the hammer-ready thumb.
And the silencing of words
is a recipe for ruin.
James Gage is a poet whose work has been published in Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Oyster River Pages, The New Verse News, and others. Finishing Line Press published his first book of poems True If Destroyed (2015).