Wordz

Like water from a rock in the desert,
      the words seem to spring up from nowhere.
Look what I've made!  How clever I am!
I forget that every word in the cistern of my skull
     was first poured in from elsewhere:
          from a book, a movie, a friend, a teacher.
And I should never be quick to write off
     the fountain of words from which I first sipped;

When my son and I said,
     in the exact same tone of voice
          at the exact same time,
               "Now THAT'S a mosquito!"
I realized that I was not the only one turning into his father.
I realized that a childhood spent
     swigging the words of my mother,
     guzzling the words of my father,
Would lead to me pouring out this inevitable concoction today.

So here's to your words,
     may you always pour and drink well.


So after writing my post, 30 minutes or it's free I became aware of an event called Wordz Only, put on by my coworker, Kenneth May. I really wanted to be part of it. I had little to no idea what to expect from it, but I wanted to be in it. And a poem sort of bubbled its way up out of my head. The story about Quinten just wanted to be written. I thought it would be a Roblog post, and it may still be part of one (along with me saying something just like Horyon's father,) but not right now.

I sent the first version to Kenneth, and he suggested that I try using "imagistic language instead of composing statements." Good advice. I ended up adding the first line, about water from the rock, and the idea of words being like water that we drink suddenly came into focus, and ended up permeating the entire piece. I have tweaked it and added bits and taken out bits, and even now it is not the same as what I read yesterday. But this is the version that is going up on the internet, so it's about as finished as it's going to get.

I told Horyon that I wanted to go to an event on Saturday night, but I didn't tell her that I would be reading something until the day of Wordz Only. When she found out, she was excited and wanted to come with me. We had a good evening, and spent a lot of time talking both before and after. It was fun for both of us, though there were some pieces (including mine) that she didn't understand. To be fair, there were some pieces that I did not so much understand as experience. It was a nice break from the concrete language that I use during the work week.