tongues, unafraid

when you're bleeding, it is hard not to get it all over the place...here's a new eruption.


final words chosen in haste are too honest for the funeral.
we seek the politic, the polite, the light sauce on undercooked game
that masks the bitter edge where truth has already been buried,
married to walls inside the mausoleum, a museum for the blind.

find me in between the words surrendered, pretended to
by the few who would even notice the travestied earth,
forced to play comforter to that which is already fled,
dead against the sky and, yet, now ethereal and immortal.

blind the eyes. break the bones. still the heart
and you will at length find that the truth never even bent,
it went someplace where your handprints on it will eventually fade
as the taste of jasmine returns to tongues unafraid.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.