The Weakness of Words

Words are my thing. Words have always been my thing, even as a child when my story came first in the class competition at around age nine. When I was a revenue officer, people wanted to read my reports because they didn’t just talk of credits and debits and undeclared sales, they also told of closed curtains at noon, half empty whisky bottles with the tops left off, and hilarious excuses to explain the lack of accounting records. My Surveyor even used to get me to write his letters occasionally. And when I was in the navy, words got me out of trouble time and time again.

I wish I could regard words as a strength, but I don’t see how I can. They’re a useful way of getting what you want sometimes, and a good tool for evading justice, and a fun way of passing the time, but that’s about all.

The trouble with words is that they’re so often wasted on those who lack the wit or the will, or sometimes both, to understand them.

I’ve never been a poet, and yet I wrote this to somebody not so long ago. It took no effort at all; it just slipped out easily and naturally because it was my truth in that moment. I haven’t even bothered to edit it, as I would a prose story:

What am I

But an ageing bear

Raging at the universe

And what are you

But a dancing girl

Stepping in pools of sunlight

And casting golden glints

Upon the damp dark walls

It didn’t get me anywhere, and there was no justice to evade, but I suppose it passed the time in a pleasant way for the few moments it took to type. But that’s all. See what I mean?