I use ugly words on purpose
I write ugly words on purpose
ugly ugly ugly ugly
until they lose all meaning
until they lose meaning
ugly ugly ugly ugly
words words words words
meaning meaning meaning meaning

I like it that they
have to do what I say
but sometimes it’s better
when they no longer matter

The way a first taste of coffee
is exquisite and delicious
and by the end of the day
you can drink it down like water
and it means nothing at all

just (to extend the metaphor)
makes you jittery and mean
and puts a bad taste in your mouth
and builds a brooding stockade
(fence posts bristling like unkept teeth)
against sleep

In this bitter analogy, what is sleep?
Sleep sleep sleep sleep.
I’ll know it when I see it
I I I I I.
I write using these ugly words
on purpose
I I I I.

Image: nothing in word form comes to my mind to escort the photo…, by Flickr user Gisela Giardino, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.