Today I will write sonnets without punctuation ...

Sometimes when I go to write poetry, of any kind, I find myself staring at a blank sheet of college ruled paper and wondering why I bother. After all the sweat and tears and dives into the thesaurus are done what do I have? A poem. A collection of words, images and sentiments in a format I chose.

But what else do I have?

My poems have never made me money, and as far as I know Hollywood is no planning a bio-pic on my life. So why do I write?

I was asked this question the other day when I was trying to get a pedicure with a friend. We had my friend’s nephew along and he was happily asking any question his aunt put into his little noggin. (Noggin, that’s a good word.) Well, as I usually do when I have a wait of indeterminate time, I pulled out a notebook and began working on a story.

“See, Emily writes all the time,” My friend pointed out to the nephew, “Ask her why.”

“Why do you write all the time?” he asks and giggles as if it’s a joke.

Lying down my pen I turn to him with a solemn face. Using the control over my face and voice that has done me good in many situations when I’m called on to lie, I said, “Because I have so many stories in my head that if I don’t write all the time than my head with explode.”

He believed me. I saw the wonder and horror dawn in his little four year old eyes. He was silent for a long breathless moment as his aunt cracked up. But then he shattered the illusion by leaning forward and saying, “Then stop writing! I wanna see your head explode!”

So much for innocent youth. However, I recognized the truth of the statement I made to him. I mean, if I stopped writing then my head would explode or I think I mean implode. I have words, images and sentiments that living in my mind and I want to give them a chance to speak. I don’t always agree with them but they demand my attention. To stop writing is to kill the voices and faces that revolve in my mind. Since I’ve lived to the age of 22 with them, I think it would be a capital mistake to silence them.

Because, if I did, then I would have only myself to listen to and that just boring.