All That I Have

Words are all I have.
They overwelm me,
spilling over at the edges,
and slipping into my dreams;
blocking sleep.

This is all I have:
look at it
here between my hands.
This is all I have:
something hidden within.
This is all I have:
a dictionary, inside.
Pick a word
and I will define it.

Words,
that is all I have.
An overwhelming burden
of language.
Words:
a freedom, and a prison.

I spew words
like a bulimic rejects food;
my stomach purging
their poisonous syllables
and that sticky, cancerous grammar.
Sometimes it makes me sick
- all those words spinning in my head -
and I write to expell them;
to make room in the corners of my mind
for other thoughts and feelings
besides that irritating, low level diction.

You'd think that
with all these words
I'd be able to form them into
logical phrases
and rhetorical clauses,
but I can't.

The words disobey me
and explode from my fingers
no matter how hard I try to
utter them through my velcro-lips.
They ooze from under my fingernails
and shimmy down the octagonal dimensions
of my pencil,
dripping onto the paper in huge,
teardrop-shaped ink blots.
They seep through the paper-thin
layers of my skin
and lather themselves upon it like tattoos;
intricate patterns of language
woven between blemishes and scars.

Yes,
I have words,
but no means to speak them.