Student Publishing Program ::

Daniel Weinberg

My Speech Is Like Steel, My Words Are Like Wind

Watching the wind move around me like
motor oil swimming, spinning around a bucket of water
But staying separate, confident and strong.
Wind dragging masses of metal through the sky,
Harder does the air blow and I stand still,
farther do my words flow held by the
strength within my bones, by the will
within my obstinate mind.
My speech is like steel,
My words are like wind.
But the air moves endlessly,
holding nothing, carrying everything.
It flows by my face and
the path is cooling.
The scent moves past my nose and
I taste the words flowing free from my lips.
Syllables climb the buds on my tongue
like a locomotive screaming around bouncing tracks,
dips up and down on crooked road.
But without a driver, it stays on course,
without motivation to lead my words
they fall heavy like rooftop shingles
drooling down my chin and onto my lap,
Evaporate like self-inflated pool water
under hot steamed sun of summer days,
to pitter-patter falling rain,
Back onto rooftop on
Top of my back.
Liquid flows down aluminum corrugated panels and
drips onto the cracked and dirty sidewalk below.
Words and ideas splash and spread in chaotic pattern
and congregate in gutters like hubcaps off an old vehicle,
Bouncing around on potholed asphalt,
ever rolling with no plan of ceasing.
My speech is like steel,
My words are like wind.
Perpetual path holds friction to fiction,
with no driver to be seen
but the unfaltering air.

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