Fractal Language
by Odin Roark

From the grunts of primitive history
evolved the erosive,
the sometime subtle sound,
of vibration’s gaping mouths,
like yowling crevasses,
echoing into words,
fearfully voiced from lips if closed,
might bring silence of thought.

How Punchinello this expression called vocabulary,
where intellect’s immutable dance-symbolesque
manipulates like a puppeteer,
determining what we see,
hear,
and ultimately feel
deep inside.

Desperately…

We cling to our tethered language,
fearing loss of grip will occasion precipitous failure
into glaciate-layers of lingual waste,
words uttered carelessly with little thought,
fracturing our resolve into scree-like projectiles
careening internally out of control,
rendering us defenseless and immobilized.

Resilience prevails,
patiently allowing restless valleys of polyglot sediment,
to roil through evolution’s next lingua franca,
becoming the next iteration of sounds and symbols,
destined as fresh and new,
so we tell ourselves.

Such is cosmic’s wink at man’s sapient conceit.