Moving Out of the House of Words by Christine Jackson

Ballet Rehearsal, by Edgar Degas (b. France), 1873.

Moving Out of the House of Words
 
Characters flee pages
like spirits from a haunted house.
Stacks of vacant volumes
march along the shelves. 
From behind a nearly closed door,
emoji eyes watch an empty corridor.
 
The brain sits mute,
machine-heavy,
creation silenced.
In a universe latticed with black holes,
a shredder on a rampage
whirs through planets of lexicons.
 
We had expected language
to frame a forever sentence,
as immortal as Attic figures,
in static postures of pursuit
across a Grecian urn.
We had thought expression would speak,
vital and renewed,
like a graying scholar among fresh-faced students.
 
The empire of sentence structure has fallen,
a vague legend.
Night clashes over comma splices
have ceased.
Rehearsal ends with ballerinas
lying still in pools of afternoon light
shining into the studio
through high arched windows.
The drama closes with stabbed villains
collapsed before the scenery.
The curtain falls.
The house of words sits
dark and abandoned.
 
Christine Jackson
 
Christine Jackson teaches literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. Her poetry has been published in print and online publications, including The Sandy River Review, Shot Glass Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Stay Weird and Keep Writing, A Quiet Courage, and Verse-Virtual.  
http://cahss.nova.edu/faculty/christine_jackson.html