#voicelessness

[spilledinkandwrittenwords]

voiceless

clumsy tongue stumbling and crumpling over stuttered and slurred syllables. knowledge and emotion crashing in without words to describe, without knowing what to say. because see, the thing is everything is a test, every word and phrase and conversation all tests. and i don’t know any of the right answers. because see, the thing is i can smile and laugh and pretend that my palms aren’t sweaty and my heart isn’t clenched inside my chest but i don’t know what to say, and all my answers are wrong. and see, the thing is i know exactly who i am. i just don’t have the words to tell you. and see, i know all the right answers, i know what i should say, but i can’t force the stupid syllables to form behind straining smiles, and whatever i do say comes out like a lie, garbled and misshapen and ugly. and see, this is what it means to be voiceless.

[mbuyu-lucas]

Angry poet

This poet is angry, he can’t tweet no more, His voice is locked in a box. His fingers are clipped off.

He screams, day in He screams, day out. But he can’t produce A sound louder than these Bars that lock him in. This poet is dying…

O feel it! Feel the faint pulse underneath the words on your screens, His pulse is a siren if you listen with your heart.

He fights every day, He fights in a very way. But he is confused, a fly that doesn’t know where to die.

[fadagaski]

Thoughts

Today I have no voice. It makes for an interesting experience, as a teacher.Things observed whilst being voiceless:

It is incredibly frustrating having to truncate the full extent of your thoughts into short fragments that can be easily spoken.

It is incredibly frustrating having to rely on body language to convey complex thoughts.

It is incredibly frustrating that people stop talking around you, or also lower their voies to near whispers (benefit as a teacher: silent classes).

It is incredibly frustrating getting people's attention when you have something to say.

When you do talk, people take special notice of your words; they accord them more weight than when you're your normal chatty self.

It is exhausting.

The animal aggravation that Max demonstrates I can totally understand because this. shit. is. aggravating. But I'm imagining Furiosa without a voice; she relies on the power of speech so much more, and I think she'd go absolutely bonkers not being able to express herself verbally.

That ... that's the extent of my thinkyness today.

[nadeemarouh]

كنا نصطاد القصائد الجيدة بصنارة أوشكت على الخرس we were fishing the good poetry with a fishhook of voicelessness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4twYVOmQwE

[playofshadows]

We women apologise too much...(but) do, mostly, grow out of it...we find our voices. We're less afraid to speak out, ruffle feathers, displease. To be the women we really are. We tend to reclaim some of that fire of early girlhood that's gradually nibbled away by puberty, teenage years, the shock of life; the curtain of niceness that Edith Wharton says befalls all females.

Nikki Gemmell (source here).