Member Poem

Sometimes I feel that there are no words
for how I feel about you, and I wonder
if perhaps languages were birthed this way;
that maybe primeval humans, angry
and frustrated at the inadequacy of gestures, were
forced to utter sounds, except they still couldn’t find
full expression of their affection, and so they
uttered more sounds, grunted, formed babel
with the shape of their mouths, smacked tongues
against teeth, until words were born,
and yet they still fell short, and so they uttered
more words, categorized into nouns, verbs,
adjectives; little nuggets of noise strung together
by what, hey look -- FANBOYS! Then, they saw
this garland of words, and thought wow,
what strange, what newfangled beauty,
and there were tournaments to see
who can string them the best; so then
the feelings got lost in excited interjections,
and they forgot what it was that they had wanted to say;
then, they thought maybe it didn’t matter because now
they have this thing, this wondrous thing called language,
and I bet it must be like inventing the pen, typewriter,
telephone, the internet; how someone fell in love
or ached to connect doing something other than make noise
or grab body parts to contain meaning-- raw,
abundant, refusing to be tamed.

This, I know. I like being silent with you and watching
you sleep or feeling your gaze upon my body,
and knowing that in those silences, the truth lies,
uncorrupted by words.