The Prophet Thoreau

I just read through this play, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail... really excellent... one of those books that you finish and are convinced you're going to change the world while you walk back to put it on the shelf beside all your ambition and good intentions.... and it got me thinking about the importance of our voices and the great power we have through speech and the written word... which in turn tossed me into the black abyss of my mind where I store all memories of editing poorly written articles... double negatives... and unnecessary word abbreviations used in everyday conversation. It's not a place I like to visit often. It reminds me that we have a problem; minds like Thoreau are becoming a rare commodity. My generation is having a hard time communicating... expressing themselves fully... and I can't help but wonder if it's not so much about our poor grammar and pathetic expanse of vocablary as it is our inability to find a truth to speak for. Maybe it's not so much that we don't have worthwhile things to say... maybe the problem is that we're missing the passion that gives our voices sound.

Truly friends, what is a word if it speaks not truth? Why, it's not a word at all. Isn't the purpose of a word to convey the reality of the mind... detail the movement of the soul? Is it not that movement that causes us to speak? If only it were so. Only in a world of precocious ignorant fools could such a thing be true... a world where human kind lived according to the innocence of clarity... true clarity that is... the things unspoiled by the skewed perceptions of societal expectations...

But what is left in this world that society has not marred?

For we have polluted even the skies with our distaste for patience...
We have stolen away the individuality of the blades of grass decorating our lawns with our need for unifomity...
We have damned the freedom of the streams with dams.

How much more have we done to man? Have we not confined integrity to a ballot? We shout for justice and silently cast a vote while we judge the character of the ones who are calling out idle promises for change...
calling out... speaking words... but do we believe them to be true?
                                                                                                      No.

Because even we, "simple-minded citizens," know the honor that has been ripped away from the innocent words we borrow... the words we steal to formulate mindless babble and convenient lies. Oh how we manipulate the piety of syllables and sounds to compose songs of deceit.
               And yet, we entitle them truth.

I pray for our souls dear friends... for if our words speak the truth of our minds and the reality of our hearts... surely we have done to ourselves what we have done to the streams.

Dams kill even the purest of intentions to reach the oceans, just as untrue words blockade even the most honorable acts towards reconciliation. We must find harmony. We must reach for peace through our disunity.

Just as we must allow wind to flow through the leaves to sing the melodies of the branches... we must also allow truth to flow between action and speech to bridge a chord... to allow harmony to flow from the connection between our hearts and our lips. The sweet harmony of reuniting the spoken and written word with the honesty it once prized.

I live in a generation of mummbling dreamers... searching for purpose... an identity of meaning... misguided by the poetic lies of society...
        We babble... in search of the truth.
            We whisper... in search of confidence.
                 We grumble... in hopes of meaningful criticism.
                      We whimper... in hopes that someone will hear our pain.

Because we ache to speak...
                                  but we don't know how...
                     because we don't know what the harmony of truth sounds like.
          Because we, like the sky and the grass and the streams, have only known the confines of societal expectation.

We live under the veil of "societal truth"...
          a truth that is not truth at all.
                                                                 So we do not know how to speak...
  
I live in a wordless generation... because the words we've been taught are not words at all. I pray that one day we will recite poetry... that we will compose songs of truth... that we will write paragraphs born of integrity... that we will speak words inspired by the honor that language was created to communicate...

       If only someone would teach us to speak.
   
  Is there not one...
                 bold of heart and courageous of mind willing to step into our cell...
                                                                           willing to break these chains of silence?

For they are heavy and I am weary
    I'm running out of breath
         But if I could utter just one word
  Upon impending death...
May it be defiant truth that escapes from my lips born of my soul
Inspired by a precocious, ignorant fool who taught me to speak words not societally sold.