What Words Know

I wonder where the words come from,
full grown, all of life
reduced to a viscous ink
crawling slowly on bleak parchment
I draw lines from each verse and metaphor
to places, people, things packed tight in coffins of spent time,
and I hope the vectors will coalesce
into a dark tunnel leading back to a single source,
but I see them disperse weakly
seemingly lost, asking for directions, bending into flaccid arcs,
each a spider trapped in its homespun web,

and now I want to write about love
and the flashing spectrum of truth
as light weaves in and out of it
or maybe those are bodies moving in and out of clouds
leaving rainbow coloured embroidery on the sky
or are they ugly sutures on a purple wound
what do I know of lies and hue and healing
the lines bend and turn away from the past
whatever birthed those bastard words is gone
they seem not to know what happened
but where I will be going next
before I even concede
it is time to move on.