Words, Dead or Alive?

Words.

A recent exchange of thoughts between few friends made me sit up and think. Are words lifeless, inert and dead? Or are they live, buoyant and alert?

One friend wrote:
“To take offense would be absurd
o'er forgery of bisyllabic sound -
For God's sake, it's just a word!”

The second friend wrote:
“O writer of fine verse,
The spat had drawn to a finish.
For you, it is just a word.”

And thus wrote a third friend:
“Words carry meaning, it's what makes them so
They say what we feel in the heart and mind
Words speak our joy and sorrow.”

Are words meant to speak and convey? Are words to be understood in the manner of the receptor or does the initiator have to qualify their import so as to get their meaning across? Are words just like the morning razor, “use, throw and disown”?

Not one of us can claim to be not fascinated by words, their deceptive hues and certain and defenite impacts. In my opinion, while a receptor is entitled to his views of the impact a word can have, it should be the initiator’s endeavour to ensure that what he means by a word should be received in the same sense. This evidences the success and intelligence of a write. I crave to be an intelligent writer rather than a great writer.

My attempts at writing about “words” are placed below. The missing consistency is because “words” have meant different things to me, at different times:

PRISONER
------------
Conjure up
more words, if you can.
I know, you mean
not one of them.
Truth lies in those
you haven’t uttered,
the ones you have
carefully avoided.

Those words, unspoken.
They walk with you,
guard you from the truth.
Awake, wide-eyed,
they sit by your bedside.
In your nightmares,
they trouble you
and by sheer deceit
make you succumb.

Yet,
never being your self,
you live on as
a prisoner
of the words,
you never spoke.

Vijay © 21st March, 2005


MY WORDS
-----------
I wonder sometimes,
why always
you have to look for
life in my words,
search for
their material traces.
Your quest only twists
and distorts
what I mean to say.
For my words
have no body
nor colour.
Only a sifting fragrance,
you try and fail
to hold on for a moment
in your palms.

Vijay © 18th March, 2005


WHY
-----
Should I have held them back?
Could I have held them back?
Unintended,
the words fell out.
Like arrows from
the quiver,
never to return.
The aftermath,
drastic, unforeseen.
Am damned, when my heart speaks.
Reason, it does not see.
The devil laughs twisting his tail.
Why does he win, always?

Vijay(c) January, 2005


QUESTIONS AGAIN
------------------
Unfinished conversations.
Questions, measured.
Monosyllabically answered.
The uncertain pauses
between the two,
increase expectations
multiply fears.
The stress on a word,
and a slur on another,
sometimes conveying
what ought not to be,
we, end up
creating more before
the earlier ones find
their answers.

Vijay © 21st April, 2005