Transforming Your Mouth Into a Strident Airhorn of Truth and Love
In April I visited my friend's prison poetry group. Another person and I both talked about our writing. The other writer had us do an exercise, and this is what I wrote. I just found it while I was cleaning. My words have weight, are so heavy they push up. Uplifting words bring me back down to earth and root me so I don't get lost in my neurosis. Words aren't expensive, talk is incredibly cheap. A picture is worth a thousand words and I can draw a picture in the dirt for free, I can buy a painting at the thrift store for a few dollars. Talk is cheap, but we're miserly with words that matter. I try to make my words count. I use the dictionary frequently. I enjoy different words- words with a new nuance. "Phoar..." When I was young watching british sitcoms on PBS... "Phoar" wasn't a sexual term then, and I still don't think it is... Phoar... we said it a lot. Little black kids in South Dakota using british slang thanks to PBS. My words matter. Communication is difficult, messy, fraught. Words help us.
