Jake Newland's poem is about the feeling of being worn down, and it ends by pointing to a specific cause: language that has been made too tidy. The opening lines describe a tug-of-war. There is a "pull and drag," a "perfect weight," and a force that rips back any progress just as it is made. Even the "forward" gets pushed away from the "front lines," which gives the sense of a struggle where gains keep being undone. The title, "Backwards Velocity," captures that odd idea of speed moving in the wrong direction.
The last lines turn from motion to words. Nothing is as draining, the speaker says, as language set on "stone pedestals" and "wiped clean of the moss that gave them life." I read this as a complaint about words that have been polished and put on display until the living, messy part is gone. The speaker seems tired and frustrated, and the mood is heavy and stuck. The poem suggests that the exhaustion comes less from effort itself than from empty, lifeless speech.