NaPoWriMo 4/30

I wasn't planning on putting every poem up here, but I'm kind of happy with how this one turned out:

Lost Words
Words are never lost
They are delayed
Clog the pipes of flowing thought
Washed like sediment
Make words taste tangy, metallic,
They find their escape.

Words are never forgotten
They just get stuck.
Pushed to the edges of a smile
Lurking in the parentheses of what you say.
They pulse like stars
Light up the pathways of lost loves and angry ancestors
And they sparkle electric
Never forgotten, sharp and crackling until the day your power is cut.

Words are never defeated
They are just patient.
They are not censored,
They are versatile.
You guard against them,
But they do not relent.
They press at the boundaries,
The edges of your vision
And you can see them.
The lost half of your half-truths,
The full flow of your lies,
They never leave you.
They thicken your blood
Make your heart pound faster
The farther you remove yourself from them
The harder they pull.

Words are inevitable
They never get winded
They never get hungry
They never get angry.
They wait.

But words are not sinister
They’re just not chumps.
You can’t push them around
They come to you for a reason
Because your mouth can shape them best
Because your hand can trace them the way they want.
They’re more than your resumes
Your test answers
Your annual reports.
They’re yours.

And when you touch your hand to paper
They flow from you like blood,
The ink of them drying against the air.
They pass through us like air, like food, like love
Give us life
And then return to a circle older than us.

Our pages, our voices
Complete the circuit.
So you can offer your resistance
But the current carries through.
You are powerless against it
But it is powerful within you.
Plug your feet into the Earth
And let the sparks fly from your fingers.
Because bones decay
But words will stay.