This golden tongue possessed,
Duplicitously capable of love and war.
Simultaneously able to be dreadful,
And inspiring.
We use our immense power,
Our beautiful gift,
This sputtering speechifying,
For naught and nil,
All the wrong things,
Until,
All our intelligence amounts to so much spittle.
Occasionally our words may become us,
As when we build verbose abodes of warmth,
Of embrace,
Of decency,
Of family,
Of love.
Yet,
So seldom do they come near that ideal.
Rather,
These mouths of ours,
More often than not,
Become weaponized,
Antagonizing,
Caustic.
As when we choose to smite,
Or spite,
Or snidely divide.
Our words betray us,
Defile us.
When we use these clever syllables,
This cacophony of putridity,
To eviscerate rather than communicate,
We take ourselves further from truth,
Away from understanding.
These ugly sounds reverberate,
Echoing uselessly in our souls,
Creating shadows and doubt,
Summoning great demons of fear,
Costing us everything,
Leading us far afield,
Away from creation,
Closer to annihilation,
All while we're too dumb to listen.
Our wagging tongues serve no purpose,
Save one,
To swallow our pride.
For truthfully,
Whatever hill we choose to defend,
No savage insult,
No stabbing snark shall sway.
All our artful words,
Finely crafted to the letter,
Expertly sharpened,
Will always fail.
For,
To the ears of our opponents,
They remain like so many voices at Babel,
Making no sense whatsoever.
Let us,
Instead,
Lay down our brittle crowns of irony,
Let our wordsmith's furnace grow cold,
Shutter our parlors of pallid critique.
Our brutal salvos,
Always a zero sum endeavor,
Result in too many papercuts,
And I have no more bandages.
1-5-2020
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