Words and Poetry (Music and Songs?)

    Words

    Words!

    Yes, these terms and sounds and ideas and exclamations that we emit

    They come and come, gratefully, and naturally

    To all of us, everyday.

    We hear them, we say them, we repeat them.

    We think them.

    Some in verse, others in tirades, or screeds.

    Libel and slander and defamation, all these words and phrases occur

    They happen, these phenomena are part of life

    Be they lies or truths, or even half-way met

    A mixture, a deadly or sickening porridge or stew.

    Words to live by, words to condemn by, words to uplift or cry to...

    All the words that we know and the ones that we do not

    We don't.

    We do. 

    Maybe we do.

    What was that word?

    Exacerbate? Make worse.

    Yes, some words and phrases make things worse!

    Take, for example, a curse word.

    Did that help the cause? For some, yes.

    Some vitriolic epithets merely enflame a fiery maelstrom.

    Other blasphemies and vulgarities, aye, much forceful

    Evince pedantry and tiresome bloviations.

    Yes, I said bloviations.

    A fancier word for stupid, evoking the insipid, vacuous verbal ejaculations

    of a cow.

    Yes, all those words mean something.

    Multiple times in my life, a colleague or cohort will correct and high-handedly retort:

    "Words mean things."

    Yes, invariably, indubitably, unabashedly, in all voraciousness and opaque cruelty and dash,

    Words mean things.

    Bien sur, mon frer, mes amis et madams et mademoiselles.

    Words even mean things in other languages, of all things!

    Go figure.

    Words mean things to the high and the low, the crass and the elite.

    Yes, yes, yes. 

    Repeated, a word makes it way, evolves.

    A bit like all of us. 

    Evolving, changing, perambulating.

    Wait right there? What does that mean?

    That p word, for example. Does it mean walking?

    I think so.

    What does that mean, said the weird Scientologist, from his 

    Los Angeles super center, or whatever they are known as

    Questioning me, the graduating student, a thirty-two year old

    Who had read some books, written some papers, attended many lectures.

    Seen articles and essays aplenty.

    I knew some words.

    He knew less, it was apparent. But he 

    Wanted to know the meanings!

    He wanted to know more. This is good.

    Words are good. Meanings are good.

    Messages are important. 

    Lyrics and treatises and compacts and constitutions

    Laws, bylaws, road signs, directions, advice, ingredients, post marks, time stamps

    All form words to live by, sometimes to die by, sometimes to torturously pass through

    To survive, experience

    And here I will say it:

    I am sorry I have not given you a more rotund, robust, stronger castle to live in

    I am sorry I could not provide a gilded cage where harm and threat could not penetrate

    Ensconcing the windows with difficult scenes that empty our peace

    Could my words, anyone's words have prevented such disturbing events, thoughts, passages, occurrences?

    Who is to say?

    Words help us, hurt us, hurl us, stop us, refrain us.

    Words matter. Words lift.

    Words tumble and crash.

    Some words evaporate into the ether.

    Like poems, like songs, like midnight soliloquies that are performed on stage for thousands,

    Or the one going through my head one night in the dead of summer as a teenager.

    Or the mind walk I had on the Paradise Island Beach, as my eldest children ran to the end of the jetty way

    And the wife and youngest figured out how to make it back to the ship.

    Footwear matters. Our shoes, our sandals, our boots and crocks.

    All these things are meaningful, they come from the words that make up our universe.

    Where are you now? What plain of the universe are you inhabiting?

    Too many non-sequiturs?  Too many random ideations?

    Too, too, too, have I said it too much?

    Too many words? Too many thoughts?

    I think not.

    These words will suffice.

    For now.

    Thank you for sharing.

    I say that half-condescendingly, almost tongue-in-cheek

    Clever in a way, bloviating in another vain.

    Yes, cows and us dumb humans have ways of expressing our thoughts and feelings.

    Thanks, again.

    A funny author quoted the dolphins: grateful for the fish.

    The words of a clever, possibly cheerful, or likely circumspect

    Writer.

    He of these words.

    And, here, with some pedant irony, with mine.

    My words, now your words, they are all our words

    As the Sean Penn stoned teenager film character bemoaned to his troubled professor:

    "This is our time", meaning, time is not simply his nor hers nor mine.

    We all share the time, these times, these words.

    Thus and hence, I thank you for considering and playing victim to or beneficiary from

    these words.

    Our words.

    What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine, too.

    Are these only words?

    Yes, but there is always more.