Commentum

Why bother with the roots of words?
Why bother with our histories?
Words mean what we mean as we’re used.
Words never mean what we used to.

Concepts change, like everything else.
Earth used to mean the whole wide world,
And its mountains were eternal.
Now Earth means one little planet.

You don’t think that changes you, down
To the least details of boring,
Embodied hours as days go by?
Maybe not. Maybe cigarettes

And justice and the politics
Of skin in the United States
Would be the same if Earth still meant
The center of the universe.

Certainly you act like it does.
In that case, the ghosts of meaning
Should matter, at least to poets.
Commentary, any quick search

Will show you, used to mean something
Like contrivance or fiction means
To you now. And what do you call
Plotless and opinionated

Fictions? That’s right. You call them lies.
Commentary emerged from lies,
At least in the vernaculars
Partly descended from Latin,

Which in turn partly descended
From whatever from whatever.
Your minds are made of meat and dead
Ideas, as your genes are mostly

Self-copying viral fragments
That can’t even make viruses—
Your tongues all throng with ghosts, our ghosts,
But do you care? You spit us out.