Some Challenges of the Spoken Word

People say things, right? Isn’t that how people are supposed to interact, by speaking mouth-words? That’s the impression I get, anyway. And apparently one is expected to respond relatively quickly, without taking too much time to process. Conversations should be slower things, I think. Is it alright to say things that don’t necessarily need saying?

When I’m quiet, I do have things in my mind. Things I could say, I suppose; things I could make into words and push off of my tongue for other people to hear. But I ask certain questions of myself before saying things. Like Who Cares? Is what I am about to say genuinely relevant to the conversation and its participants? Will it make someone think? Will it make someone laugh? If the answer to all of those questions is “no”, my lips often refuse to move. But I’m never quite sure if that is the right decision, because I tend to experience many awkward silences and I can’t help but think that it’s my fault for not filling up the space with words.

On lugubrious days
I get the impression
That others may notice
My verbal recession.

Sometimes on desperate impulse I will regurgitate some vaguely-related phrase from my mind, whatever is floating closest to my mouth. How very spastic I must seem, stretches of silence awkwardly punctuated with puzzling interjections and broken responses. Then sometimes there is nothing floating nearby and I feel a solid white space behind my eyes, a catch in my throat.

I need to make
More words with my mouth,
Build them on my tongue
And then push them out.

I suppose it doesn’t matter very much anyway; everything I have to say has been said before, if not by me then by someone else. Any concept my little brain could possibly conceive has surely already been thoroughly wrung out by minds brighter than my own. Why bother saying what has been heard before? I’m only twenty-three; I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to say new things, or even to know very much about old things. Why bother saying something that is not new, or that is essentially unproductive?

Sometimes I feel like a ineffectual robot: inexpressive due to lack of data, then randomly activating in sudden bursts of short-circuiting gibberish. Hell-o. Would. You. Like. To. Con-verse? Yest-er-day. I. Ate. Straw-berr-ies. Do. You. Like. Straw-berr-ies? Data: Straw-berr-ies. Carry. Their. Seeds. On. The. Out-side. This. Has. Been. A. Pleas-ant. Con-ver-sat-ion. That. Ful-filled. Social. Re-quire-ments. Good. Bye.

I think I am better at the letter-format of communication, when I am able to contemplate my words. To edit them, to see them somewhere other than my head-space before they are announced. I make more sense that way.
Why do you think I write so much?

I pronounce to the world
Some stuttering sounds.
They look at me strangely;
I’ll just write it down.


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