. It still needs to be improved, though, so any help is appreciated.
This was inspired by one of my lines as the character Gloucester in King Lear. (The first line in the poem)
No words, no words: hush.
A certain intensity and harshness
circle your consonants, as they
drip off your tongue like watermelon seeds
in summertime. They blast into resting water
so quickly; the water only has time to emanate
little rings around the imprint
in a subtle attempt to heal it's wound.
Perhaps it's a specific roughness on your vowels
that makes the leaves curl up inside themselves -
their spines in a deep contraction, tumbling
onto busy sidewalks below. With their edges folded in,
shoes of street-goers crunch their solidity into sheets
of crinkled paper, matting the cement with softness.
It seems that your speech turns innocent cotton-ball clouds
into raging gray streaks shielding the sky. The blueness
once revealed is covered and hidden, as the clouds
pour their anxieties into resting pools of water, and atop
helpless leaves clinging to their branches of origin.
No words, no words: hush.
Everything is still.
).
