Wordsmith: Wily Words

How can you trust them?

These playthings, these fashions.

People play with words.

They ploy with meanings

to suit their words.

Their words are like sores on skin:

you prick them and they ooze out

an unwelcome meaning

How can you count on them?

Their words are bangers

you fire-test, detonating

with an unwelcome din.

How can you heed them?

You trust only workaday words,

as shopworn as mops, as scored

and scarred as a cutting board.

Always the quotidian and

never a gemstone.