Small Talk in Your Head

We’re halfway to cicadas
In dirt, all your languages—
Much noise as we make outside,

We spend almost all our time
Buried in your darkling skulls,
Talking, as you, to ourselves,

And most of what we do here,
Wriggling in your neural soil,
Amounts to fattened phrases,

Whatever small talk you know
From family arguments,
Childhood playmates, adult peers,

The little boring speeches,
Recycled observations,
Common compost anecdotes

Steadily eating away,
Nothing you’d put to paper,
Nothing you’d declaim on stage.

That’s what language really is,
What all great stories come to,
Grubs thick in the mulch of you.