Post-poetry

Have we moved past the age of poetry?
The verse that speaks most to us
is from an age gone by,
and as our language escapes us,
it seems less likely for us
to make use of the words
in the ways that the poets had.

We speak now in limited vocabularies,
forever adding words
To our dictionaries
but removing so many others
from our usage.
We stagger through life hindered
By our shrinking lexicons,
so suddenly incapable of
conveyance and appreciation
of language.

That it would be Gutenberg’s folly
To propel us in the ages of technology
While the actual inventions of his genius
Wither and rot to our consciousness.

Books no longer bound by conventions,
Electronic, delivered to illumined screens
and forgotten.
Words, too, sit unused, unheard,
Save for ramblings of intellectuals and
Essays, long-formed and mostly unread.

Where do unspoken words go?
What graves guard the deceased syllables
of prose and poetry?
When the world reduces its collective rhetoric
to mere utterances, what remains?