Why Words Don't Seem to Come

Have you ever felt that urge to write something,
but when you sat down,
and pulled out your pen,
your notebook comfortably resting on your lap,
the words wouldn't come?

Such is the case at this very moment:
my pen now stands in proud array,
pointed straight down on the paper,
filled with the vainglorious joy of its purpose.
("I am the pen of a writer!" it declares,
"On me are borne the dreams of men!")
Yes, my pen is poised, and I am about to tell a thousand stories,
stories I have heard a thousand times before,
and yet never actually once.
But they seem to be resisting being told.

They don't want to be unleashed,
loosed upon the earth--
and who, honestly,
can blame them?
For words are the most powerful creations ever devised in the minds of men;
by them have been started and ended wars.
With the swift stroke of a pen have been felled entire empires.
They can ruin lives,
they can raise entire civilizations up,
and raze them to the ground in the same day.
They have rent asunder countless lovers,
and brought together countless more.
No gun or bomb or any other dreadful weapon next to be conceived by Science
has as much power as is contained in a single word.
Books, of course,
and poetry,
are like vast storehouses of Power--
all those words!
each one of them a vessel of unimaginable potential,
but together,
they could make or break the world.

Who, then,
could possibly blame the words from wanting to remain unwritten?
"No no!" they cry.
"Do not let us go; for we may strike the earth.
What consequences could we cause the human race to endure?
What myriad possibilities might we contain?
No, we are far too powerful, sir.
Do leave us in this pen,
in your head,
and never let us go,
for we could change everything."

That, I say,
is precisely why
I am writing.





-D.B.