THOUGHTCRIME

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Them’s Fighting Words

It’s funny how words can transpire, inspire, create a desire light a fire or reveal a liar.

Words can dampen the spirit. You tense up when you hear it. Your whole demeanor changes. The door comes off its hinges. The meek and docile you becomes the angry, raging you, and the glue that held you together becomes sand. The fists sting where they land. All because of words. All because of what you may have heard.

Some people know how to push that button. They lie and manipulate you, then all of a sudden you fly off the handle. Now you’re in the middle of a full blown scandal. All because of something as simple as a well-placed word.

-Dorothy Sells Clover BACKYARD QUINCE - A PAEAN TO PETWORTH A narrow, urban, and uptown alley, peopled by the old and by the new, finds comparison to be troubling, as bitter as backyard quince.

Those self-same old and self-same new, neither hating, loving, nor knowing the other, find indifference an effortless aegis, as unyielding as backyard quince.

Mason jars of lemon curd and red plum jam, opened and stabbed from exotic tongues and skins, could find common hearth on calescent scones, as redolent as backyard quince. -Arthur Martinson

I read the book of love in my sleep but when I awoke I remembered everything but the words. We took turns with the pages, but we did it in phrases. I begged her to read between the lines because poetry is just the words within the spaces Heartache is just love without creation. The repetitive eye movement I move meant I move mint repetition day in and day out, it never gets old, unable to break the mold I don't find comfort in the pain but I've grown comfortable in this pane Aloft I left a lock of lovely long hair upon a loft with lofty loathing of my loneliness to me below These are things that carry me off to sleep, if I do not dream I will not reap If these things true will not hold, I will not keep These are things that care not if I dream, if I do not sleep I will not feed

-Tyler S. Weisman