Lexicon Prison
by Odin Roark

The chosen weapons,
so many collected,
spawned from schoolyard bullying,
nurtured in middle school taunting
matured beneath boardroom guises,
under bedroom comforters,
and locked behind bathroom doors.
Weaponry often hidden beyond sight,
above the law

How understood the lacerations
the lexicon of ordinance
delivered in whispers,
shouts,
condemnations,
sweet nothings.

How naïve our defenses,
trusting verbal assaults,
air filled with everyday sound,
wishful double entendre,
until…

Until
the bleeding starts,
from where we often know not.
Festering sub-conscious wounds
spread over time,
seem destined to last
as life’s aggression hopes.

And so…

Protection sometimes comes,
not in the form of retaliation,
but by the mind’s ability to seal off
during those infrequent,
but blissful conscious hours.

Always hoping,
slumber will come not easy,
knowing to fend off sleep-time invasion
requires one finger,
two fingers,
three finger discipline,
sometimes demanding
Jack’s whole bottle.

And still…

Certain ethereal time
presents prisons locks lost in shadows,
bars become blacklicious Twizzles,
allowing dreams their escape
into that time long past,
where certain feelings heard
came accompanied by caresses,
trust that lessons received
could be learned.

Yet…

So many such moments
Became banished with sharp-edged words
buried deep in deceitful innocence.

Eventually…

Some of us become grateful
for the dawn of another day,
where last night’s wrangling torture disarmed
allows respite, at least until duplicitous skies
become dark once again.

Perhaps…

This permanency,
this lexicon prison
is freedom in disguise,
at least for those of us
living of our lives in a productive
kind of insanity.