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 test-fire, detonating
with an unwelcome din.
How can you heed them?
 
You trust only workaday words,
as shopworn as mops, as scoured
and scarred as a cutting board.
Always the quotidian and
never a gemstone.