POEM - What is being left unsaid?

In the stream of words
they come at you, like tart veins
of raspberry fluid mixed into the iced cream
of form, context and meaning, all
lost to the tone, the frustration
that's weighing down the words,
we feel it, but reluctant to hear the phrasings, lest there
being used as smuggler ships, bringing in the contraband
of unacceptable thoughts, the ballast of prejudices,
the half formed, dressed in not quite ideal language
words isolated from sound, unmoderated
unmodulated, unmediated, unmasked
mouths we don't like the shape of, from people 

with human hearts and lungs, articulating
in inarticulate ways, do we fear some sharp needle
is concealed within these raw dum words?
not used in circles, elliptic or squared off
directed words, pointed and pointing, 

clumsy exclamations, maybe

symptoms of their voicelessness, echoing around a dead end canyon far far away, away, away,

from rooms where 

you just don't say that, shut up, you and your sort

back to your sleepy silent hollow, diverting you from the 

stream of discourse, the artificial seating arrangements
of polarised debates, intellectual nuance built in
to silence anyone unversed, take away 

the embrasure of their mouth,

their oxygen, their ability to breath, dialogue with their diaphragm
and release, exhale those befouling words into a megaphone
and the reports will edit it out, yet if there are
no pictures, no texts, no blog posts, no vapour trails
then history becomes neglectful, an impoverished lie

presenting only neatly packaged myths

sanitary words, binding nuptial agreements
speech, truly free, cannot be legislated for
it abhors the stamp of government
approval, we must be willing to suffer the coarse in words,
the sling of uncomfortable sentences
their lies, their truths, their defencelessness, their innocence
of the narrative, how stumbling they can be,
off message mouths, test our shibboleths
are the imperfect vehicles for the collective brain, there's pain
in the named storm of these words, this is how language 

is cracked open,

to examine the oracles displayed in its entrails, 

and then to discourse

for this is all we can do, to locate
whether there is any truth
in whatever is being left unsaid.

Stephen Lumb
written March/April 2022