Burnout

Burnout: exhaustion

cynicism

feeling of reduced ability

And they have co-opted even that:

burn-out velvet

burn-out fabric

The theft of language

It would be different

if we had carefully

placed our

words

wrapped in swaddling

in the bullrushes

for someone with

hopefully better prospects

to discover and

protect

Instead words have been

slowly stripped from

us leaving us

first without

the clothes of sharing

then without the

undergarments

of transmission

and finally without

the flesh of

meaning

And now all we have left

are the hollow skeletons

of empty form

sketching a

once-living

but now

arti-factual assortment

of bones.