Verbosity and Silence

Verbosity and Silence

-So, Omar, what do you think? What's going on here?
-Well, I'm glad you trusted me and told me everything. You seriously didn't know what transpired? 
-Hell, no! If I did, I wouldn't treat you for dinner, and set myself back for almost a hundred bucks, and asked for your opinion. I'm feeling like a stupid fool, old enough to be your father yet not smart enough to fathom this mystery called the human mind manifested through his behavior and the thing called language.
-Thanks for the nice dinner, Roberto. I'm always partial to Thai fine cuisine and the sake wine that goes with it. It always reminds me of Kalaya, my first Thai girl-friend of the times long ago and of the place far south in Southern Hemisphere where I was an ignorant, clumsy, stupid, scholarship graduate student in Public Administration. Anyway, I'm digressing. Talking is important, very important, for a soul in distress. Freud recognized that. It was his first applied insight. Ordinary laymen, priests, monks, bosom friends all knew the importance of listening and letting a troubled soul ramble on, but Freud was the first physician who got paid by just sitting in an armchair while his patients, mostly over-refined Viennese ladies, talked their hearts out while reclining on a couch. We all have a need to unburden ourselves; we all want to be understood and appreciated and respected. Remember that, Roberto. All of us have that need. Not just you. Do you know how I can tell if a person is just lonely and needs a listener or a mind on the verge of breaking down?
-No, doctor Omar cum professional assassin cum modern day Don Juan, prithee, tell me!
-The coherence, the organization of thoughts, the choice of words, the hidden message. Or lack of the above. Just an angry, digressing flow of words reflecting hurt feelings because of perceived self-importance. You asked me the other day if indeed you were going crazy because of your all-consuming, powerful need to talk to me. Remember, my answer then was that I wasn't sure about your mental and emotional states. Now I know. 
-Stop beating around the bushes! Am I really okay or not?

Omar loved theatrics and histrionics. I think he was an artiste manqué. He looked at me intensely, put on a grin, and then put his enormous, manicured hands (both of them) out and asked me to put mine on the table, which I did. He then took both my hands into his and softly said, but with a tone of finality as if he was rendering a judgment on the Judgment Day, "of course, you are....okay. Just work on being silent. You certainly talked enough."

That evening, I took a long hot bath. I stayed in the tub for hours, alternating dozing and letting thoughts course through my brain. Then I had a brainstorm. Barely drying myself, I rushed out to the living room, fished the slim book of poems of e.e. cummings from the bottom shelf, and looked for a poem that always turned me on whenever I felt a wave of music washing over me. I then read it over and over again. Then words arrived from somewhere deep inside me. I thought of her, of Kalaya, of my stupid past love affairs, of my mistakes, my gullibility and naïveté, and I wrote the following, with the aid of the poem written by e.e.cummings right in front of me. I swear to you, to God, to whoever that's willing to listen to me, my poem is far better than the original that inspired me. If you don't believe me, just look up the original and compare it with mine. You then perhaps would probably forgive me if I indulge in a fantasy, in an audacity, in an untimorous temerity to call myself a poet and to think I just wrote a poem that is going to be immortal:

"voices to voices, lips to lips"

                    with heavy homage to e.e. cummings

voices to voices, lips to lips
i swear to you and to everyone else
that they make up the undying
of this sentiment that refuses to sleep

what's beyond logic can only be magic
in this moment that even God
cannot compete 
i bring you no flowers but only
scuplture of my words
if you close your eyes
you'll miss their kiss

voices and lips are more than just for songs and kisses
who cares if some sons of bitches
insist that Spring be the opening
of hearts and smiles

i am not afraid to dream that and this
nor am i afraid to fly
into a zone called land of kisses