You go ahead
and claim your
airspace and
say the piece
that’s tucked
in your coat pocket.
I will applaud
the syntax and
synonyms
and slang
and slander
you repeat
from what
you gleaned from
the grapevine.
You heard it
through the grapevine
where the wine
of youth is
truth that’s
wasted on the
young who’ve discovered
their voices
but not what
they wanted to say.
But we all
started
claiming our
allotted airspace
and shouted
our hard calls
and predictions
in overstuffed language
that tried to
rewrite what
we all thought
we knew,
the things we
heard on the grapevine.
The air coarsens
with darkness
that aren’t
clouds at all
but rather the
changing color
of the sky
we looked up to.
The fruit of the
grapevine
gave us wine
that made time slow down
and the senses expand
even as we slid
off the seats
we took as we
waited to speak
our piece
to whatever crowd
turned out.
The fruit died
on the vine
when everyone
tried speaking clearly
at the same time.
The slang, the slurs,
the synonyms,
the scathing scale
of scintillating syntax
is a hive mind
drunk on its buzz,
the train of thought
is detailed,
the stream of thought
is beaver-dammed
and flooding,
the road ahead
is a telephone pole
seen late
at night
too late
to swerve.
.
Ted Burke
.