Paroled Fable Thieves Intro piece (TJ & Kristen Tomanocy)

We live in this house of language
This cathedral
of oratory masters.
this castle of tradition
dug with fricatives and dipthongs
poured meaning through these sounds in order to cement stories
My bones never mortared themselves
for Aristotle's corinthian mantle foundation
but they hold up the rafters
while hinged lungs from the past sing back and forth
with every door we open and close in the hallway
my tongue drags along the doorknobs
wanting to taste every story with these words
starving for the ferment of cellared ancestry
I taste the spilled blood like iron in the hinges
my shins hold up the dinner table
plattered with a history of every noble hearts evocation
so listen
when you live in a house created by the
howls of human need, extending the limb of language,
a lost tongue in a shadowed cave of a mouth
you feel the echoes of your next door neighbors
So stop sitting down
stand
Raise a primordial scream like a battering ram
because the labored breath of
these creators is rattling through us.
demanding to be heard
We can own this.
Read this.
Channel this.
Lyric this.
Love this.
The words of our people typewrite themselves
through our toes on this hardwood floor.
write this. write this. write this.
Move like you have been given
the chance to construct stolen sonnets,
we are nothing but thieves in this mountain of crumpled pages
oragami masters
adding new folds from our own experiences
delivered through our breath as a gift
to decorate anothers barren dwellings
Because when you inherit this beautiful, ancient
temple of a house
all you can do
is listen to it.