Earslip

One careful word
misconstrued;
one careful word
chewed
and sent to
the annals
of care
where
worlds are made
that are not there.

And though it is
brushed aside
it's given life
inside their minds
and seems to say
the deepest things
about ironic
subject rings

that circle
and intertwine
then bleed away
like party wine
into folds of decay
then rise again,
again, at last,
to plague the corpus of my cast.