Do These Words Matter?

A Poem

I don’t know what happened How writing became “writing” and the lure of clicks and claps and back pats and warm cyber embraces overtook the emphasis of the actual words leaving us all struggling in different ways because the world is hell-bent on marketing itself through a Facebook ad or mass text, instead of looking us in the eye and telling us that it isn’t really interested in our personality or our background but that it would like access to our data

And now “writers” don’t care if someone sleeps with their book next to them and cradles it like the second coming of whatever Lord you believe in or pray to because they would rather get a solid review on Amazon, even if you haven’t read their book or even the cover or even the dust jacket or even the preface Because that review can help them earn more from publishing companies who made them do all of the work on social media scrawling out excerpts in short bursts to market themselves and their words in an arena with a bunch of shouting fans who don’t care about the words on the page they just want to have a slap fight on the Internet

I don’t know what we are doing sometimes when I look at the homepage of a “writing” site and see preposterous pomp and circumstance and collective corroborating clickbait cackling in our face as we try to write a meaningful poem that will get sent to the bottom of the pile and placed underneath the latest #personalessay on Apple’s latest iPhone that is coming out that will trend and viralize itself because we, as a culture, care more about our gadgets then the words we type aimlessly on them And speaking of words, do they even matter anymore?

Do These Words Matter

when all of the syllables around them are modified calls-to-action begging us to get on a mailing list or follow on social when all we really want is a follow back, not a holler back because that would be a “meaningful” communication and we don’t do that

I don’t know what happened to pen and paper and love letters and apology letters and the simple art of wordsmanship as art Like a fountain pen dripping ink into form the blood of our creativity is leaking out into the ether in favor of another rundown on the most perfect and infallible morning routine imaginable And isn’t it so funny that I can link to a humorous take on said morning routine, inside a poem about not being an a**hole and still, at the very same time, being an a**hole myself in the name of humor?

I do know what happened Technology turned us into beggars with all its fast-access and badges and rewards that we couldn’t resist because who wouldn’t want to be the mayor of a local café on Yelp because maybe we would one day get recognized for that while our words were collecting dust in an old journal that wasn’t even good enough to be called Moleskine and that would make us feel better because our last poignant story about our childhood was outweighed and drastically out-earned by a think piece on seltzer and the art of carbonation

Do These Words Matter

inside the tiny parcel of the Internet where we are all unpublished and yet still, “real authors” come to write blurbs because someone gave them a deal to be here with us, as hope slowly dwindles out of hearts and into another Facebook group where we all complain that writing is dead and maybe we are right, maybe it is Maybe words are a hologram of a lost time and now the new version of words are just building blocks for content structures that will eventually all look exactly the same, but different

But still, we write, not them, us We write because the alphabet is pouring out of us and if we don’t put it on paper it will just end up piled in the corner, next to the wastebasket that gently cradles the novel of our dreams We write because we have to and because life without these words would be so meaningless and nondescript even if we know what we are up against We are up against a wall of fake words An army of pencil-wielding “writers” wildly grabbing for our audience and our friends and anyone who will read but the one thing that content forgot is that it has no heart And without heart, those words do not matter but even on my least creative days when I ask myself

Do These Words Matter

I know the answer because I feel the answer Yes, these words matter and it doesn’t matter where they are buried or hidden or undervalued because if we keep writing and letting them out those words will reach one person who cares and when that happens, we know that

These Words Matter

© Jonathan Greene 2020

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