Words don’t lie

I have come across a couple situations recently where I have been asked to write.

Poetry slam at the junior high, where the two super cool, gritty poetry slam chicks (they were definitely not girls, they were chicks) encouraged everyone to do a sixty second free write.



Poetry booth at the Tucson Literary Festival with typewriters. TYPEWRITERS.  Really, you can’t resist a good typewriter and a chance to pound out some wonderful words on a vintage typewriter.

Both times it was like slipping into an old cashmere sweater – soft, washed too many times and with four dog claw marks in the back so it looks like I was attacked by a hungry bear (ok, sidetrack.  That’s a story for another day).  The words just slipping out, and hitting the page with too much force for regular words.  For me, right now, the words all come back to Andra. 

I read early on that I should write.  I should write everything, and all the time, and it would help me.  But after about two minutes of that I realized that writing it down was pretty pointless.  Because I didn’t want to remember how I felt.  Because I was trying everything I could not to feel it.  I couldn’t think of ANY reason anyone else was going to want to know how I felt either.  I used to write for the girls.  I was down one.  I didn’t want Grace to know how awful I felt about that. That was why I wasn’t writing.

I even believed it.  But when I was pounding on the typewriter and the words were just there, as they are, I realized why I really couldn’t write. 


When I write, the words don’t lie. 

I can’t lie. 

Stephen King says that writers have a secret – that their words come through them, not from them.  Maybe the universe doesn’t have a good poker face.  I don’t either, but in spite of it, I love to play poker.  I suppose, perhaps and maybe, that playing something you love, even if you are a bad liar, is the honest thing to do.  Even if it makes you have feelings.

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