Like little birds startled by crumbs we scatter
for cover when the big words come,
the ones stripped of any art, the ones that singe,
mostly avoided, successfully dodged those lumps of dry bread.
Keep truth abay with a light swathe, a gauzy cloak of
half-heard, half-uttered little drones of
nothingness, conventional riffs of jazz, too polite to improvise.
A necklace of platitudes we spin for each other:
barbs disguised in vanilla puddings
to be uncovered by the archaeologists of
our dead love.
