>The words I speak
sometimes float away
on a brazen wind
getting lost,
eventually buried
for a millennia,
dug up by an archaeologist
and put on a shelf
next to pottery shards
and other words and phrases
left behind
by fellow questioners.

The songs I sing
when I’m alone
have no melody
nor hunger for one,
droning from
verse to verse
riding a
beat tapped out
by my tongue,
existing only for me,
not the mob,
although they rarely bring deliverance
from my buzzing brain.

I speak
and it evaporates,
I whisper
and it blends,
I shout
and get branded,
I stay silent.

-- ​Christopher Hivner