Tangy, the aftertaste of unsent ink,
words left like fishhooks in my throat.
Of your preposition that held up my sky,
love became my silent film, soon unreeled.
Not to be unzipped, unbuttoned in the dark,
man’s executioner lurks within his whisper;
Best laid plans are left unsaid at the confessional.
Friends echo fallacious words
tonight, the coin was tossed into the sea.
Tongue tastes, a blind snake in a maze;
twisted sheets after bad dreams
and on the bridge that’s always burning,
tied a noose to the rail.
Tangling telephone wires hum my hymns
over the moon-whispered tides;
Our empty cups, save our salt,
simple as a slip, a dark entry,
joyful as the fire laughs at the forest;
Words become the silence.
Tied (again) but now with notes;
Tongue (again) a rusted hinge
knotting the clocks, doing time.
Over (returns) like a skipped stone’s fate,
poems sank to the lake bed;
Often returning to the teacher’s words
spoken into jars and never sealed.
Tangled in a comb’s teeth;
Tongues – final act – stilled by dawn.
Live and maintain pretence, to write
poems on ghost paper.
With the last match in the box,
friends (again) echo their silhouettes.
All the sand left in the glass;
Tongue (last stand) now a relic,
tangled for a final time in this museum.
Word one, we’ll never say again,
@ – a noose around the moon;
The most dangerous definite article on the
wharf where lost verbs go to drown.
Legendary, the stains became
night, the inkwell we dip our days in;
Of (last breath) the last breath;
Tangy – full circle – a foretaste of new
words for scented letters.
A type of mesostic or maybe a skeleton key poem, I’m not sure exactly what this form is called. The first word of each line is taken from the complete poem ‘word tangle’ by Rog Leach. The last two lines reflect back on the first two.
The words are 95% mine, with some original assistance from AI for the base. I kept the line ‘@ – a noose around the moon’ though, as it appealed to me.
1994ever 