Logophobia (Fear of Words)

a poem by Pancholi Nandlal Kanjibhai

Words are vile worms
Worse than pathological germs
When I see them on blackboard
Or behold them on computer screen
They pester and prick like pointed pin
And make me scream and writhe in pain
Sending sore signals to my brain

While passing by a big hoarding in a bus
They seize and smother me like octopus
They have hideous hands and perilous paws
Which have caused mankind all its woes

They frighten me
For they emerge like cacophonous crowds
And round me like dead body shrouds

When I encounter them in a novel
Or unearth them from history with a shovel
They fill my eyes with itching and irritation
With their wanton and weird aggression

When I see them lurking like panther in death sentence of court verdict
Or see them in Astrological forecast
That darkest future predict
Or see them in Pathologist’s Report telling blast cells in blood
And detecting leucocytes rising like flood
In Elisa Test declaring someone positive…

Words kill and stab and nip in bud
Merciless butchers they are!
Ignoble ripples in mud

Words everywhere words
Repulsive and ubiquitous like migratory birds
Can’t we get rid of them as we do
With poultry birds infected with flu?
Can’t we turn deaf mutes and talk in gestures
And in maim the drama of life rehearse?

Let’s be disoriented in a spell of Amnesia
Where we forget
Who we are and all our paraphernalia
Or let’s be struck with severest aphonia
So that neither sign nor sound can us harass
And we can fly calm kites of euphoria
From a lonely terrace