In A Hermitage of Petrified Words
by Michael Doyle

Like a forest well petrified
By minerals filling in for life
A poet thinks in his hermitage
Dreaming about things to study on
There's an abandonment of conjunction
When like Chomsky, language ceases to function

We drift like lyrics without meaning
Frozen in acceptance of bygone eras
As we discriminate on misplaced prepositions
Changing verbs into rooms never meant to occupy
It's a place where words flow into emptiness
Making their way while pseudo-thinkers nod in bliss

Advocating a gradual linguistic evolution
That forms words as sterile as cross-bred mules
Words like survivor from simply feeling unsafe
Or the resistance of those politically aggressive
Which only makes sense if existence is attack
Minted like emblems in opposition taken aback

It's a dangerous gambit to take a liar's word
The truth of time is that history does not take sides
In a world where deficit adds up to surplus
And the Krazy Glue whiffed is treated as perfection
These words from modern times have taken life as self
But their meanings will not be taken from Webster's shelf

There is a perpetual messing with the sort of everything
Seeking to find our way through all of this emptiness
Because our fates depend on our coming to understanding
And certainty of meaning has become misconstrued
In this petrified forest of words, quite often ill-conceived
There is an immutable stillness in a poet feeling deceived

(c) February 10, 2022  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved