In words we trust

Steel never worked

except for the collectors of blood

providing carcasses

over which wealthy hounds gathered

to howl,

their front feet resting on skulls

while worms burrow into the guts of everything.

Hiding never helped;

someone always found them

or the steel did

or the hounds and worms

or blackest coal lit the way

exposing them

and fear

finds everything, has a nose

large as an ocean,

ears and wide as the sky.

Pleading only makes dust

of the future,

makes forests fall and leaves

into graves for what may have been

if time was shared equally

between failure and hope

and we know that is never the case;

misery is the best poker player there is.

But words

written on paper, on walls,

spoken into the ears, into the streets -

words defeat steel because words

unlike the flesh

cannot be pierced, cannot be blooded

cannot be stopped by force.

Words have no heart

and so carry the hearts of us all.