Feeling Each Word

  You read a poem. It has nice, artful, and unusual words by an obviously skilled poet, but there is something missing... you can't put your finger on it, it is an elusive notion... then you realize that you can't put yourself into the piece; OK, so maybe it's a piece where you come away in awe of the author... but that still leaves you with a hollow feeling, you have not been nourished...

   Then you go and write, with only those models that you've starved on... you try for awe, you try for effect, you try for respect, you try for publishability, but you stop short of writing that which would reach another's heart... you instead go for the mind... a purely mental piece, word after word, phrase after phrase, with images and concepts that are to be mouthed, to be stamped on one's forehead, to be marketed, and once again you come away famished...

 

   You try backgrounds, fonts, images, sounds; nothing is working, you continue to play to envy, to style; you cannot seem to reach the heart...

 

   You become emptier, frustrated, angry, you begin to rant... like a raving lunatic, and finally, someone feels you...