On Writing

by Dale Neibaur, 1974

Superficial sentimentalities

Beaded in ink

Across a thousand pages,

Stamped in ebony

Within a million volumes;

All empty.

Wasted words

Silent spaces

Dusty phrases

Dead cliches

Metaphors mixed as freely as

The thoughts that spawned them;

All are voids: Meaningless

Disinteresting

Dead.

Empty ...

Rattling through the ages

Like rocks in a tin can;

Clinking together like the dead bones they are;

Bones of beasts born of imagination or

Loneliness or

One drink too many.

Leave the bones be.

Don't kick tin cans.

Save your energy;

Save your sanity.

A thousand scribes scribble a million characters

Into a thousand leather-bound volumes;

Each scribe intent on saving a moment,

Preserving a thought,

Dissecting an idea.

A thousand monkeys could do as well!

At least their random jumblings would be explainable,

At least they'd not waste time with such frenzied haste.

There are a million moments,

Each much like the last.

Why waste an infinity

Studying an instant?

Thoughts are not insects

To be embalmed by an alcoholic pen,

Nor will words pin them to a page for study.

One cannot inject an idea with ink

And thereby trace the paths from its heart

To its extremities.

Superficial sentimentality.

Wasted words.

An enfeebled David flinging pebbles at the feet of an

Irate Goliath would stand a better chance of

Capturing his prey.

Varicose vernacular.

Tubercular tales.

Catatonic cliches.

Words are flung at everything from Pluto to Politics.

God! What ineffective missiles!

Statesmen spout sentimental soliloquies;

No one listens.

Writers warn of war and waste but

No one reads them.

Singers sing, Debaters quibble,

Writers write, Telecasters talk,

Commercials scream, Politicians preach,

Leaders laud, Critics cut,

And the people walk on through, untouched.

Uncaring.

Why bother?