Napowrimo 4/16/26: Old, Reliable Echo Meets the River in the New Millenium

 Today's Napowrimo prompt inspires us to write about an unspeaking thing that has still somehow shared a message.

the television is a squawk box,
plunders words from friends and foe
alike. i, myself, know something of
that feeling. no words have been my
own for longer than i can remember.
and yet, here i am still spewing the
lines, just like my friend with the
antennaes, tracking the otherworld's
waves or electrical firings
and spitting them to me
to repeat to the world
while both of us never say
anything at all.

aberration

i don't want you to search out the words that 
call to you
avoiding the rest of the good word
i'm using to litter the poem
good word or words in the grand
scheme we are all doing a lord's
work. 

my lord
my stars
my my

i want you to understand
this holy mess
was begat
begotten 
been given----
a name
an image
for it
to face eternity
and you'll still
wish against it
on whatever star
you cling to

my my
my love
my own

know that i
write you a letter
to preach good words
and i'll know
you'll find whatever
word you think is
good enough
and that will just
be 
the way this word
is passed. mine
will be
yours

4/29/25: biography of none

 Today's prompt. Not a full 100% take on the prompt, but this is what is spinning around in my brain.

words and the like build
an invisible monument, reinforce it
with sentence structure. an errant clause,
punctuation housings and wirings. splits,
electrodes, and more to it than the untrained
eye (namely: me) can ascertain. The world becomes
a paragraph and all of the rules of nature, laws that govern
existence, fall into a single space before us, write themselves
into being. we are left to make the meaning ourselves. we get our
wish: play god and move all of the king's horses and all of the king's 
men around the game board. where to build hotels and where to 
press our luck: park place and the boardwalk, railroad robber barony,
becoming the means of production ourselves. starting small riots
and smirking as the workers tear apart what we've made for ourselves.
it is just like this. everything is reduced to the word choice. everything
becomes all right or terrible or listless or eccentric. or just is. or was.
one day it will be, too. we can only hope or fear. it just comes down
to the wording. 

Breakdown (Now in Drop D)

Earth is throttled

Torn,

Ripped and screaming fire.

Clouds drop from the weight of it all.

The Impact is a sound of crumbled foil shattering a windshield.

Our words,

No longer

Heard,

But long before

A fault line-turned-chasm grew between them.

Shifting with the undulations of another world. A dying star flailing without dignity somewhere above the crust of the earth.

Earth rises and falls

With unyielding speed.

Here the dirt and soil and rocky past grows in melody, a choir of voices building, approaching the space between us.

Something grinds and roils beneath the otherwise

Pleasant, rolling hills.

Watch it on its set path

To disrupt the dying gasps of day

With its teeth

And the shriek

Of a primal history

Momentarily misplaced 

but returned by the

Ground below.

My, how we will remember

What we thought we understood

Between us!

It is tangled in deep, winding roots of ancient trees,

Now Cracked loose and splintering in its journey,

Unwound, and 

Rupturing up from the firmament

High into the shattering sky,

Arcing away.

Watch its bend,

a moment of inflection 

and the splendor of stillness, brief,

a set piece at equilibrium.

Watch it resume

Time catching it

Then quickening its free fall, spilling out to blot out the remaining light and to remake the places

We are unlikely

To ever find again.