my wife told me to stop watching
so many documentary movies,
but i told her i’m trying to learn something,
to which she called my bluff
by asking me what i had learned from the last
10 documentaries that i had watched,
to which i replied,
well, i dunno, i guess i would need to rewatch them
words crawling about in the back,
like worms wriggling for freedom,
wondering what’s coming out,
what’s going to be said,
but it’s not always the right time to say it,
at least not yet,
put a lid on it,
and gulp down the words
until they are a secret
abstract bodies piling up
in geometric dissolution,
while numbers calculate the dead
that will never return to their families,
and birds whistle songs
that don’t mean much to the worms
feasting on the carrion
Fred Aiken Writing 