Poem 405

The natural sins of language … invented as an instrument of communication the epistolary opportunities for obfuscation and evasion must have become immediately apparent … believe none of what you read and only half of what you see …

( I like the torture metaphors – wrung, extracted, pressed, duress … circularity of the fact that the fact … the rhyme fist/bristling and the half rhyme on admit it/imperfect … )

No Further Correspondence

Your letter collapses under torture
has every different reading wrung out of it
every slant extracted
the ultimate disappointment of the messenger
not execution
or the less than fulsome reward
but the fact that the fact doesn't satisfy
in his exhausted hand no answer
just a fist bristling
with questions

pressed to confess
under duress
                             I admit it
my letters deliberately imperfect
as indecipherable
as yours

we read them to death
pointlessly
since they know nothing