on writing

When I speak,
My words seem to escape me;
They roll clumsily off my tongue
like a ball fumbling aimlessly off-court.

Either my voice is too soft or too harsh,
Having to clear my throat time and time again
As if the syllables get caught there
Entangled with my messy insides.

Did you say fury or theory?
How do we pronounce route again?
The room for error only expands
As I rush to squeeze in words into the polluted air.

But when I write,
I am able to trap my wandering ponderings
And wrap them in pretty packages
Sent and delivered with metered timing.

Writing betrays the test of superficial judgment
Where as one can be deceived by a speaker’s warm tone
Or the melodic intonations of one’s speech;
The written word can only offer its content, its bared soul.

Unlike the forceful intrusion of spoken words,
Written text never imposes itself upon someone tastelessly
But awaits patiently like a coy lover
For someone who is worthy of her readership.

The paper sets the morning
Like breakfast for the hungry mind
I’m ready to take on the day
With stains of grey, soddy imprints on my fingers.

Scripture is what grounds my faith
"In the Beginning was The Word"
These thin, wispy pages give us a fair chance
To believe in the unfathomable.

Spoken language is accident-prone
-Distorted, miscommunicated, forgotten.
You blink and you’ll miss it;
So many misplaced words, just free-floating in space.

Yet the living written word,
Playing dead on tombstones,
Will be ready to pounce
At the mere glimpse of a passerbyer.