A big room, chairs and tables arranged in rows. A man speaking, giving a lecture, the others listening or at least pretending to. This goes on for four days, eight hours a day. My back aches on the hard wooden chair, my hands are restless. After a while, when I’ve had my fill of words, my mind craves a release. I open at a blank page at the back of my notebook and without any pause, I start scribbling. This is what tumbled onto the page.
Any thoughts/interpretations/opinions? I’d love to hear them.
Day 1
The words float soundlessly,
Big chunks of rock
Hurtled violently at other people’s heads,
They disappear into thin air
Before they reach minds.
Day 2
The house of words
Came crashing down,
The a’s and b’s and c’s
Spilling out and mixing up
With commas, full stops and other bits,
A writing debris littering the ground
There for everyone to pick
And use as they see fit.
Creating harmony from chaos
Has been a writer’s dream,
Building great works to stand the time
Or be carried away by wind.
Day 3
…………….
Day 4
Words give shape to ideas,
Ideas build the stories
And the stories become a path
To be walked on
Whenever we feel like it.
In the kingdom of books
We are all kings and queens.
Beautiful poems, Delia! I liked all of them. The first one makes me remember the boring classes I had in school and university. The second one is quite interesting because it says (my own interpretation) that the difference is really thin between a jumble of words and a great work of literature. It also made me feel that things are so ephemeral. Didn’t you write anything on Day 3?
Thanks, Vishy.
I like your interpretation, even though that’s not what I had in mind but I’m always glad to see a different perspective. In fact it’s only after I wrote the words down that I started to think about possible interpretations.
Day 3 was a big blank. Not even one word would come. Nothing. Zero. Maybe they were busy preparing for Day 4. 🙂
I really liked Day 1!
I remember days spent like this. You made better use of it with this writing than I did!
I have to do something, otherwise I go crazy sitting there for hours on end. I would have liked to bring a book to read but then that’s too obvious. 🙂 Writing on the other hand….that I could get away with.
Day 1 is my favorite as well.
Guerilla poetry, I like it 🙂 Good for you, for making something creative out of something so boring. What was it, some kind of business conference? Or are you studying?
Anyway I particularly liked Day 4, that idea of the process of building, and the image of the path we can walk on whenever we feel like it. It reminded me of the democratic, equalising aspect of books, that they are knowledge and inspiration available to anybody (presuming literacy, of course, and that your government doesn’t go and close down the libraries as is happening here in the UK!). Good stuff! And I bet the lecturer was all happy that you were taking such assiduous notes 😉
It was a seminar about how to improve and implement knowledge that, for the most part, we already had. Most of it was interesting, just not for that length of time.
Yes, I do feel that way about books, it’s always exciting to read what other people say and I also think that as an author it takes a lot of courage to release that part of you out into the world and hope it will resonate with others.
They are closing down libraries in the UK? Why?
Sorry, I never came back to see your question. They are closing down libraries in the UK to save money. They can afford to go to war and give billions of pounds to banks, but the cost of a small building with books in it is, apparently, just too high.