A Full Moon With a Triangle on Top

Nobody understands anyone else
And yet everyone understands every
Body. Language makes the brain grow smaller.

More and more of the world we knew floated
Free of our capacity to feel it.
Those who did a better job of tuning

And manipulating the flow of sounds,
Gestures, bodily ornamentations
That created the thickening haze

Of ideas and symbols thrived and passed on
Their thriving ways. A bit less puzzling out,
Bit more imitation went a long way.

We became slaves to our communities.
Needing to know what no person could know
Alone, we became stupider, vessels

For translating, maintaining, broadcasting
Ever more elaborate metaphors,
Abstractions coding know-how within them.

We became unspeakably cruel, speaking
Only of what we'd been given, thinking
"What happens to a child without language?"

Soon our babies were trying to beat us
To the beginning of unthinkable
Experiments, learning in utero

Already the lilt of the mother tongue.
Like cheetahs stripped by specialization
Down to spring-loaded acceleration,

We've been shaped by unique, desperate need
To acquire and regurgitate the signs
That negotiate the world before us.

Now no one understands anybody
Who doesn't understand anybody
Standing under the stars signing magic.