Tongue of Salt

Poet,
do not whet your words
on the grains of flattery.
Let your lines hemorrhage
like cracked lips
in a winter wind.

Better the muscle,
stretched and stung,
than argentine that lies smooth
Thatt cannot lick the wounds.

Write with a mouth
that growls in famine.
Taste the rim of grief’s goblet.
Ferrous regrets wheeling
emptying aches.
The salty French kiss of survival-
against lips of ash, long cold.


Better to burn
than gleam.
Better to flinch
than lie smooth.

Say it ugly.
Say it like a wound that never scabbed.
Say it
like the exhale
before you say goodbye.

Let your tongue blister
on the truth
rather than glister
with borrowed gleam.

Speak plainly,
like bread torn by hand,
like the last word
before the door closes.

Make it hurt.
Make it heal.
Make it flesh.