Irreverent artifications

             Eventually, you start being flippant with the sacred language.  Words are not so meaningless but are so full of meaning that they become autonomous. Even small words like "you" "me" "night" and "warm" become so haughty that the skitter off the page and into some romantic tryst that makes you wonder if they were planning it all along. 

              With such rebel syllables, how then do you dare use the larger workhorses of imagery? Dare you pen "passionate" or "smoldering" or "endless"? They are apt to bite you and suck your marrow out through your very soul. 

               You eventually begin treating words with the same contempt with which they treat you. You stop caring if a word is even real because the damn things breed. 

               Litters of letters besiege your page and you are left with...what?  You wean them, edit them, find them a good home where they are loved and trained, but they keep coming back and keep demanding from you more than everything you have. 

                Is it any wonder you become flippant and disregard the very rules you so lovingly put into place? It is no good anymore to count beats on your fingers or wonder if it really rhymes because in the end, it doesn't matter. 

               The truth of the things will happen whether you dress it like a sonnet or a sestina, whether it flows or stutters. 

               Words happen, often viciously or criminally. We revere, maybe even fear them at times, but in the end, the arcane lexical alchemy becomes basic household chemistry. There isn't even a boom at the end.