Stretched like Fog

Stretched like Fog

When the inches are stretched beyond their means,
the wavelengths a flat-line,
the sound waves staccato notes without echo,
we strain to find the definitions,
look up words we have heard over and over
but now, perhaps accented by new meter or
high Britain,
muddle like fog our what we once apprehended.

The syllable remain the same number,
vowels and consonants all the right order,
strung along, nouns and verbs, heard from
birth until this moment,
but now sound foreign because the

World has changed.

I used to be a pain in the neck when
I whined too often for money or records
or new shoes or another teen magazine
(my mom seemed to take more aspirin
the same day she pointed her laughing finger).
I knew what she meant, she knew what I wanted,
she knew I knew the migraine came from somewhere

Far beyond the family.

Pain is a needle word, a squeeze between the eyes,
a diesel truck growling up the highway grade.
Pain is a dying word that will not die,
a shield raised, a wall erected between your
simple request
and my final syllable of the day.

See it this way:
Pain is now my quartermaster, doling out
the ration of words my brain is allowed to hide
away. One day 5,000, another thirty-five-hundred,
but once the rations are depleted, the words you say,
even repeated,
are hollow sounds until my allotted supply can
be repleted.