Tag: words

Cassandra

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment 
(A prophetess in Greek mythology cursed by Apollo 
to speak the truth but to never be believed.)

Words bombard the world 
in rapid fire 
every second. 
Another book about wizards, 
another poem about birds, 
tweets about Trump, 
status updates about dinner 
and cats 
and vacations, 
websites for anything you can think to Google.  

Godzilla porn.  
Why the Kardashians are famous.  
What a chair would look like if knees bent backwards.  

The things to read outnumber the readers. 
Still, writers write. 

In their lonely caves,
by monitor light, 
they fill terabytes of memory 
with the past and the future. 
They churn together experience and understanding 
until hardened into a vision worth writing down.  
And then they hope that someone 
is paying attention. 

But no one is, 
at least not at first. 
Journalists wrote about the Taliban before 9/11. 
Before Y2K, tech writers predicted 
a computer 
in our pockets 
more powerful than Apollo 11. 
A scientist published in 2019 
about a coming worldwide pandemic.  

No one listens until prophecies turn to floods.  
Still, writers write. 

They spew forth reams 
of poetry and prose
and essays 
and journal entries 
and investigative reports 
and sometimes just half-thoughts 
or a particularly interesting turn of phrase 
on a random Post-it note 
barely clinging to a wall for years 
until used or discarded, 
but playing on the mind of the writer 
in ways both certain 
and inscrutable. 

Half-thoughts that may never be read by another, 
but recorded anyway 
for naught but potential. 
Words newly discovered 
or characters formed in journals like pop-up books,
story lines and first-time rhymes scratched on a pad, 
then shaped in a computer, 
then offered to a first reader 
like an initial visit to a new therapist 
and waiting to hear 
whether to expand or contract, 
whether to improve or 
whether to shake the etch-a-sketch
until the lines are faint 
then wisps 
then gone, 
but if improved, 
then posted for the world to see
even if no one listens. 

Because the Post-It note held an idea that was true. 
Because the work holds the prediction of a world 
made by our own hands. 
Because when the flood comes, 
and floods always come,
words from dry land 
will be needed.  


© 2020 Deb Moore, All Rights Reserved 

Shhhh . . . Start Talking

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I used to think I had a whole lot to say.  A friend joked that I must have had a daily word quota.  I was, well, verbose.  Teaching seemed a perfect fit for me with all that strutting and crowing  I was able to do at the front of a classroom.

Perhaps the most obvious change I’ve noticed in myself as I’ve gotten older is the attraction that silence holds for me.  Some who know me might contend I can still hit my quota now and then, but generally speaking, I prefer listening or even the absence of that – just being.

I find that I’m not as certain of what I think these days. That will quiet a person down. The impassioned, assertive, and sometimes obnoxious speechifying of my youth seems somehow . . . dangerous . . . scary . . . unnecessary.  It has been said that wisdom begins at the place where you realize how little you know.  Well, I must be getting wiser, because some days I don’t know my ass from my elbow.

I also no longer feel compelled to engage in the energy drain — oh, god, the energy drain — that comes from the dogmatic pedantry of head-driven conversation.  Some days even the very lectures I’m paid to give my students leave me with, at best, a feeling of exhausted detachment, and at worst, a particular sort of soul weariness caused by over-analysis or maybe just by the verbalization itself.  It’s as if the thoughts are creatures of mayhem made immensely more powerful in the act of speaking them into existence.

As mayhemly powerful as my spoken words might be, however, I have learned they are but cowering and skittering field mice when compared to the elephantine magic of my silent intention.  More is accomplished through my silence than I can ever wrangle into being through circumlocution.  Some problems actually solve themselves without me controlling them.  Who knew?

I still love words.  I still love teaching and speaking and writing.  But, the silence speaks, too.  In fact, silence, it would appear, actually has a few things it would like to get off its chest.

The words that spring forth from the place of stillness are words that contain the essence of silence even in their audible form.   They come from a completely different place, and they have a completely different impact.  Those are the messages that energize me when I allow them to come through.  I also believe those who hear them are somehow enriched or at least a little more aware of being alive, and they may not even know why.  I’m sure I don’t know why.  I just know that the message is somehow less important than the place from whence it sprang.  And the words that are born in silence have so, so much more to say than I could pack into a thousand days.