The Telling Truth

I am filled nowadays

With the notion that the right words

Can unstop the genie’s bottle,

Open and empty Pandora’s box,

Halt the racing mind

Climbing out on the farthest limb

To clutch the ripened forbidden fruit.

What danger would I entice,

You might once have wondered,

Left alone, as I so often  am, with so many 

Untameable words stamping and tearing

The hard earth in the gated paddock

Of memory, living rough with right now,

Eager to run wild.

What words might I use

When nobody is looking?

(This is not quite

The morality question

Of what you do

When nobody is looking,

Though I’d like to ask that one, too.)

This word will be heard

And heeded.  

It will mark time.

What words shall I use

Now that the verbal red capes 

Are mercifully out of sight

And the prideful torero has 

Finally let the bull be the bull

And gone for a beer,

Leaving the bull

With the last word,

Whatever it will be–

That cork,

That tightly fastened lid

That cherry picker claiming

What I will feast upon

At the end of that long branch

And leaving the rest behind,

Cheerfully unmolested?

The right words will come.

This is the hope that I have scraped 

From the bottom of the barrel–

Or maybe the box

Of that unfortunate, sadly spoiled, first girl.