I Am The Word

I
am the word:
Spoken, read, written
thought, imagined
uttered, smothered
in tears, in laughter
as an abuse, abused
as articulated, power
stringed together
for link-ins
even break ups

I am the affirmative
and the negative too
I am in ascent
and
decline
in prayers, I am God, Satan
uses me too.
I am conceived
as you are
hatching out of pregnant
wombs
of matter grey
or colourless
waves of sound
of ink that is
blue, black or brown
I can s p r e a d like fire
travel faster than light
It is I who amuse
I who delight
I am signifier
I am logos, I am speech
I who communicate
Because of me harmony
Because of me breach

God SAID and that is
why there was light
and because of me
all was Good
and you could ask for Eve
It was I -split at Babel
I would be Pralaya

I am thought that is why Descarte

Poignant am I
superfluous too
I am there in quarrels
comforting silences with you

You have but to think
and I come to your mind
Get rid of me you cannot
Know me not well
and are marginalised

In politics, I rhetort
lecture in class,
in courts litigate
on roads I brawl

I am bourgeois
communist, capitalist
colonial, coloured, communal,
casteist, classed and the
vice versa too

I soar, I plunge
I am codified, I am free
I am aliph, bĕ, pĕ
I am A, B, C

Beautiful I am
I am ugly,
I wrong, I write
Workman’s necessity
The connoisseur’s pride
You need ME to judge
as thou shalt be too

I AM POWER
use me well
and at the right time,
craft me to your glories
sculpt your successes of me

I am in prizes
and citations too,

in death sentences,

it is I who woo

I am the soul
of all arts
Science needs expression
I am the language
of Commerce
Of Osama, Bush and Narendra too

I am the Azaan
at birth
Epitaph
after death

I am creative
I am critic
In this poem I am
I form cultures and traditions
I am inherited and taught
I evolve, I metamorphose
I am maimed, wiped out
Still living like the phoenix
of unnumbered facets
I
perch on lips
hibernate
in hearts
brood in breeding brains
leave marks on paper, impressions
on psyches

So let me fly
never stop
I am consequence
Yet I am process too.


Written sometime around the 24th of January 2007