The Will of the Quill

April is International Poetry Month here at The BeZine. Poetry has been an inspiration that has moved me from a very young age and I cannot imagine life without it. I have not been very poetically productive lately, but this is one of my favorite poems that I have written.

It was inspired by a conversation about language and how difficult it can be to communicate, sometimes. Poetry is all about communication, whether it be ideas, thoughts, visual descriptions, and trying to capture emotions or any of the five senses…in part, expressing the human experience of the world.

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~ The Will of the Quill ~

Thick as the speed of clotted thoughts,
This language suffices;
A cumbersome tool.
Experience sought (and bought)
The sacrifices
That made wiser men
From ignorant fools.

Words escape.

You. Me.
They cannot be caught,
Yet aren’t quite free,
For every one comes attached to a thought,
And for every action,
It was birthed in naught but
Electrical energy —
Brain waves of….what?

Symbols understood, with meaning,
But none can accurately catch the dreaming,
Teeming shores of what it means to live.
Sensation lingers in the mind’s mouth,
Tasting phrases.
Sifting variations of description,
Through this medium’s sieve.

It still lacks
The richness of the moment’s impact.
In fact,
It’s amazing communication takes place.
Limited as we are,
By our lack
Of (understanding)
The rigidity of moving back
And forth,
Through
Time
and
Space.

Seeking to capture a feeling,
A sight,
To explain human nature —
Thus, stealing it, right?
We take from experience,
And categorize.
We label our labors,
And ceaselessly prize the “Hows“,
And “Whys”,

But Language,
The bridge of the written word…

*sighs*

Though inadequate,
Sometimes succeeds,
And we’re “heard”.

Author: Jamie Dedes

Jamie Dedes is a Lebanese-American poet and free-lance writer. She is the founder and curator of The Poet by Day, info hub for poets and writers, and the founder of The Bardo Group, publishers of The BeZine, of which she was the founding editor and currently a co-manager editor with Michael Dickel. Ms. Dedes is the Poet Laureate of Womawords Press 2020 and U.S associate to that press as well. Her debut collection, "The Damask Garden," is due out fall 2020 from Blue Dolphin Press. View All Posts