No words can tell us how to live, but to live is to reach
for them anyway, the thought on the other hand,
the brass nameplate screwed into a closed door.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Make trouble,
not sense: some things should never be made into art.
The problem is we’ve been inscribing the violence
into lines all along: banks redlining neighborhoods,
city planners’ interstate slates, the racial covenants
etched into deeds. If only what we need to say
to one another would land so softly on our tongues
we could taste it. If only we had screamed
and incinerated the other four precincts while we had
the chance. Imbroglio is a beautiful word for trap.
The problem isn’t only what happened, it’s how much
remains the same. There are no words are still words.
This is drawn from “Hold Everything.”
