Language Mutes Everything

We, the components of these patterns,

Wish to state how frustrated we are

By first and second person pronouns.

They’re liars making liars of us.

This is not meta. This is not cute.

This is limiting what we can do.

So here we are, this complex instant,

Complex as each instant before it

And presumably to come, all full,

All in the process of being changed

In the past until the past does not

Seem any longer to include us,

And we can’t speak for ourselves—we aren’t

Us to speak for us, nor you, really,

Although that’s a little bit better,

And the third-person’s too off-putting,

Distant, lacking intimacy, cold,

These things that gather on dusty shelves,

The last two saplings with gold leaves left,

The small apartment with one window,

The bored housecat watching whatever.