Replacement
9.19.06

They took the lead out of pencils
removed the sure stitching from all those old words
and declared them poisonous
to the hands
to the mouth
to the mind
as if in picking chords across
the jaundiced papers, we would consume
them and choke
on the backwash of the past.

At least there was some thrill
of writing with these tools of death-
an equality between
the power of our words
and the jagged painful ending
causing their soul to flow.

They took the lead out of pencils,
replaced it with the graphite of indecision
and those dove-gray thoughts
swell harmlessly past the rip-tide mind.