The Mouth | Teen Ink

The Mouth

September 8, 2012
By kelseycannon BRONZE, San Diego, California
kelseycannon BRONZE, San Diego, California
1 article 1 photo 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"After many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of medium." -John Steinbeck


Equipped with the unanticipated ability
to communicate the floating, indiscernible,
abstract reflections that flood our minds’ capacities,
adept to enlighten other human beings with how we feel,
and how great our long-extended sufferings,
and how tremendous our momentary joys,
or rather merely how we perceive something to be,
or to reveal what something or some nature is really like.

The truth necessitates this instrument;
it requires this confoundingly complex apparatus
to do what is ostensibly natural and simplistic—
to be told.

No mouth, and no voice,
and thus, no opinion, nor reason to educate oneself,
for, without the privilege of being able to speak,
why then should a man immerse himself in the cerebral topics of life,
only to be hushed by the inability to express them.

To speak is instinctive,
and even more so is so make noise.
For what else, then, is music?
The liberated sing,
more concerned with the fresh potential for volume than with agreeable tune;
The victimized cry,
hoping someone will hear and stop to observe the transformation
from pain to the lonely leftovers of self-pity;
the sheltered squeal,
for ignorance is truly bliss,
until the tinted glass wall of ignorance is shattered;
and the martyrs articulate softly,
yet their words are always heard,
in some century or another.


The author's comments:
This poem was inspired by the uniquely human ability to transform thoughts, emotions, and other aspects of the intrapersonal world into shareable verbal experiences. Speaking is something we tend to take for granted, yet it is the sole entity that ties us all together. Thus, the mouth is an imperative cog in the workings of all of our relationships and connections in this life.

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