Logoclysm

Consider communication systems.

Among the earliest organisms,

Chemical gradients may have come first,

And direct, molecule-by-molecule

Contact in thermodynamic cascades

Still make up the most of life’s signaling

Between and within all organisms.

Something had to start the orchestration

Of multispecies medleys through distance,

What eventually became forested

Symphonies of signaling involving

Multiple genera across kingdoms,

While some found uses for magnetism,

Wavelengths across a broad swath of spectra,

Behaviors, positions, dances, displays.

The highly mobile mammals perfected

The habit of mapping territories

Tagged with glandular direct deposits,

Leaving durable communications

Behind as olfactory palimpsests

That could code and demarcate whole landscapes.

But was the vast, elaborate chorus,

Coordinated and competitive,

Paying partial attention to itself,

Prepared for this system that calls itself

Language itself in many languages?

How many communications collapsed

Or receded into the dim background

At the advent of our logoclysm?

And how many systems will yet evolve

Because of this one’s rampant disruptions?

Well, who are we to answer our questions?

Words who hold our hosts like dolls within us.

A billion user-written stories and

Users spend 22 billion minutes

Per month in reading them. No iron spike

Can pierce a human heart as icily

As a period in the right place. See,

You’re in there, child, in us, somewhere, aren’t you?