Give Words Away

Every hour alive we spend with them,
the never shutting up friend
or at least since the crack, bump, fizz
when our infant synapses
sparked a billion miracle connections of language
our primal need for expression
the hour when one garbled sound began spinning
infinite galactic combinations
like an inner universe gone wild
the thinking creativity of a child
unique and innumerable as December snowstorms in Detroit. Detroit has worthy children and is worthy of snow, and worthy of this poem, and worthy of a home, you know. As worthy as the breath you just took from the air
don't let it stay there
take what you need then give it back as a word for someone else to hear.

But in any snowstorm in any place
no one snowflake tastes the same
because they fall from different mothers and encode different DNA
and each has a purpose and destination and cries out a different name. Yes, even yours.

Every hour we're alive we hear them
echoing in our silence or screaming or mulling
or concocting the next joke we want to crack, this is gonna be a good one
but we never get our chance
because the conversation we were about to enter has abruptly moved
stood us up and cut us off to another subject room. This one, darker.
So we deposit our uncashed joke for the next time
hoping we'll gain interest from the punchline
but we'll never get to deliver it out loud
because never in our lives will we come across the same lewd inappropriate crowd
ever again. Sometimes,
you know when you've missed your chance and you promise yourself to never miss it again, but the chance won't come
Because the person is gone or
the timings all wrong
or what you should have written has instead written you
the mappings of a different life
and what you shoulda said is where you never arrived.
at least, not yet.

We spend every in between space filled by them
they, dragging us to the cliffs of our fears
and some push us to fall while others call us, running us back to the false safety of our locked and buried tomb
the one six feet below our confidence saying "you're too late" or "it's too soon"
or "stop" or "stay back" or "let it go" or every great once in a while encouraging us: "get back out there, it's just snow. Don't stay inside, hiding from your own two hands, just because you're trembling scared doesn't mean that you can't -- it's just snow keeping you from going exactly where you need to go, so, dig yourself out of this darkness and go. Just try."
Then after we tell ourselves "just try" we stop ourselves dead when we ask ourselves why.

Every hour we are filled by this:
the consciousness of our own running thoughts
running into our own running dreams
running into our doubts and into beliefs
these our smashing talk intersections of soft silhouette streams
and trickling what-if creeks and
contradictory rushing still rivers and
cliff jumping waterfalls powering steamboats of our Big Ideas
aortic engine poetry spinning verses into wheels and
treading self-condemnation and murky mental reservations
and brilliant flashes taking underwater pictures of absolutely nothing
and long shots of hope to recreate what we see, our mind's eye
into art or expressions of half-truths and whole lies
or whole truth half-disguised
as bad jokes or that moment of vulnerable exchange when we try with our eyes
or with our vulgarity or the silent shield of our pride
to coax others to reassure us "I understand what you mean" or "tell me more" or
"I had no idea you felt the same way" or "don't give up hope" or "just try." To hear the words: "just try" is what we chase after. We go such a long way for such a short answer.

Even right now you're comparing my words to the unstoppable judgment of your own, "she's an average poet," or "she's got a point" or even "I could have said it better had I known...that I could be a poet too" and even in your most sedated state of meditative mind
when you're in the seventh hour of your sixteen hour drive
to feel the air of a far place you've never seen or must return to because you saw it, years ago, in your dreams
or when you're in full swing conversation and different words spill from your lips than the ones bottled up in your self-talk head
when you say "sure I will!" but you're actually thinking "why am I saying yes?
just to avoid disapproval from her?"
while she who asks you says "okay, great!" even though she's thinking "sucka, I hooked you again!"

We are a living compilation
of unending unrecorded chatterbox music, staccato struck notes and pianissimo emotions
and here's the inescapable prize we each win
we get to listen to ourselves over and over and over again
talking ourselves into and out of our dreams and backwards and forwards from what we're trying to say even when we don't do what we know we can or don't say what we mean.

We get to listen to the voice saying go
telling us to open the heavy door and pick up today's snow
melt our costume like cold snowflakes on our tongue
face up to the sun
letting out what's in and letting down what's up and breaking through what our walls won't let us shut up or shout into breathless air
from way up there
something's calling your name, beckoning you to speak the music you write and express the punctuation in your brain because every thought ends with a question and every statement starts with a comma, every blank space has an answer and every answer rights a wrong or writes a book or finishes an argument or begins a debate or becomes a song
the one you sing to yourself at the top of your shower lungs when there's no one around or the one that lulls you to sleep when your whole world crashes down.

But here's what we must do. Each one of us. To listen to our soft streams, our trickling thoughts and our voice and our ideas
then give them an outlet to be expressed and shared
maybe just upon paper or sung into the air
or between spaces between backroom confession walls or inside the ear shot distance of a 2AM long distance phone call
to a lover, or a friend, or a daughter, or a father or to that person you never told
what they really mean to you
so you quick use every courageous muscle you can
before you talk yourself into missing your chance.

Let's do this. Speak what's inside out
to live as honestly as we think and share who we are
finding for ourselves a way around
from the depths of our buried inner tomb
keys from our heart to the thoughts locked in that room, you know the one

whether bursting with love or cowering with fear
if we listen closely enough we'll hear
our name being called
those snowflakes of our winter doubts
encouraging us from outside these walls,
saying, "Come out"
and saying,

"Just try."
Because what's within us will within remain
unless we speak ourselves out loud
and give our words away.