The Implantation Of A Word

It is an expression.

An art form drawing its patrons into its world. A written articulation that turns words into sentences. The sentences progress into paragraphs and the paragraphs push forth chapters that migrate into a narrative journey. One page at a time, the journey moves into an experience.

With each page turned, one may be warned to take precautions.

What lies ahead may cause you to think, discover, release, or reflect. And ultimately be brave enough to stay on the path. This is what a writer does. Invites the reader to experience a journey that begins with the implant of a word.

In elementary school, 1^st grade, I loved to read.

I loved to read with expression. I became easily frustrated with my peers who didn’t inflect properly or bring life to the words on the pages of books. In protest, I would suck my teeth and abruptly my head would find shelter on the top of my desk.

I became disengaged from the stoic vocal expressions of my classmates. How dare they dismiss the power of Dick, Jane, and Sally, Spot, Mother and Father. And then there was the cat, Puff.

Maybe they knew what I was ignorant about while being immersed in my elementary passion for reading.  They knew the Dick and Jane series warranted no power and even less of a connection to our inner-city school building or the community it was housed in. Perhaps they were more woke than I and engaged in their own literary protest.  But I, just wanted to read.  

The brick and mortar structure of P.S. 43 stood on top of a hill in the South Bronx.

A zealous reader in the classroom, I felt like a celebrity each time I was chosen to read, after I’d eagerly volunteered.

The stage was my assigned seat.

My audience was the Black and Latino children who filled the wooden chairs. Sometimes I would lift my weight from the seat, stand to my feet and permission my voice to travel further throughout the room.  It was for them that I read, fearlessly, boldly and with expression.  

I didn’t know that I wanted to write.

I discovered that I liked to write. It provided me with a channel of articulation beyond my silence. Writing allowed my words to flow where they would not exit. It offered me an expressive place to park the inventions of my imagination.

I loved to read and recite poetry. Langston Hughes, The Dream Keeper.

A white hard covered book with navy blue lettering on the cover. It was filled with flowing lyrical words written for children who looked like me. With guileless innocence, I thought I was the model for it’s inspiration. This book became my endowment from P.S. 43 and the New York City Public School System.

I kept it without permission.

Reading the poems expressively, incessantly and privately, promising to share my favorite with the future children that I would have.

Lullaby For a Black Mother.  

“My little dark baby.

 My little earth-thing,

My little loved one,

What shall I sing, For your lullaby?”

…………….

…………….

Yes, I am enamored by the orchestration of words and the stories they tell. The creative license and power that they provide when they are compassionately composed, is for me, extremely compelling.

It is almost sensual.

 Bringing a creative moisture to the tips of my fingers and an acceleration to the vessel residing in the center of my chest. And even in its ugliest form, when it is raw, frightening, so brutally truthful that the reader may flee from the pages to avoid the pain or more intimately, the mirror. Even then, the narrative journey can be climactic.

My relationship with words is often like a hidden affair.

Done in private, hidden in corners, passionately in love but extremely cautious. The tantalizing games we play. How does it fit here? How does it feel there? Right there, yes, that’s the perfect spot. 

We travel together on sheets with perfect lines and sharp corners. 

I sometimes replace you with other lovers that I think are a better fit. I fight and become angry when you don’t cooperate. There are times when I abandon you, but I always welcome you back. How could I not? You are symbolic of my thoughts, my feelings, the life force of my voice.

I experience the writings of literary icons.

Those who have gone on and left the influence of their work behind. Because to simply read the narrative is a disservice. A lack of attention to the acclaimed genius of these writers.

Maya, Toni, Jimmy, Alex, Langston. Well-versed novelist with creative compasses and powerful narrative voices. These evocative producers of literature, solicits me to ask, from what repository of visionary stock do they draw from?

However, this query may be too simple.

It is quite clear that it is the inherent consciousness of these prolific voices.  And in the seat of unrest, they awaken the consciousness of the reader. An awakening that began with the implantation of a word.