Oh a poet’s heart
can love a stranger from the start.
She can dive deep
or force her heart to leap.
With one simple talk
her heart can be shown to walk.
Reality does not hold her down;
not when love can be found all around.
If you would like to read more of my poetry please take a look at my portfolio or watch a few of my poetry readings.
I will be blunt because there is no real way of talking about my speech journey without doing so. I have a speech impediment, where d’s and t’s don’t always come out right or at all. This is especially true when d’s and t’s are in the middle of a word and I haven’t said that word a lot or at all.
Growing up I hated that it was called an impediment. It wasn’t because of any negative experience I’ve had with having a speech impediment. I hated it because I blurred the syllables together. I couldn’t say what I had well.
After years of speech therapy, theater, and practice, friends and most people have said they don’t notice it. It can now be hidden and I can speak to be understood now.
Still, I can hear it. I may not consciously be aware of it with every word I say, but I know it is still there in the shadows. It especially yells at me when I listen to a recording or when I’m speaking through a microphone.
I repeat the words my friends tell me, “It’s just how I sound. It’s just how I talk.” I remind myself it makes me unique and those who matter don’t fault me for it.
For a time I cringed my way through editing videos of where I am speaking, whether it was monologues, tips, or improv videos. I forced myself to get comfortable with my voice. It did help me become more comfortable with my voice and accept it.
Eventually the videos slowed to a stop. The improved self-esteem for my speech was only a bi-product and my goals that were the real focus of the videos were not in the foreground of my motivation.
I gave little thought to my voice or speech for a while. It was not interfering with my life and it didn’t seem like an issue. I could listen to my voice without cringing now and everyone could understand me. Part of my thought that the impediment was behind me. It was something I had not have. It felt as though the struggle with my impediment was over or a tiny pebble in the shadows of a far corner of my mind.
The funny thing with the mind is if you shine a light on a pebble it can grow. Even the slightest connection to it can create a boulder under the right circumstances. The pebble becomes a hurdle, which opens wounds that should have been healed.
Partly from stress and partly because a light was shined on my speech, I now had to face my speech impediment again. Even though the focus on my speech had nothing to do with the impediment, I saw my insecurities surrounding it.
I now have to figure out why the pain of not speaking exactly like everyone else still remains and threatens to come out at the slightest reference. Why does anything negative relating to speech or talking bring me to tears?
On the surface, it appears that the reasons are easily seen. I want to be viewed as smart, but I must first sound intelligent. If I’m fumbling over words, stuttering, and finding replacements that I can say my IQ appears to drop.
I do not want what I view as my weakness and flaw hold me back. When it does I feel all the times its held me back. I am reminded of going to speech classes, being taken out of regular classes to go to a special speech therapy class, and feeling the label of “different” on me when it was not my choice.
Even now when I gladly wear “unique” and “different” as a proud badge, being different in speech hurts. It transports me back to being a child who did not ask for the label or want it.
I always felt loved and do not remember anyone teasing me about my impediment. They would tease me and bully me for other reasons, but never for how I spoke.
I do not want to blame my short coming or not getting things in life on my speech impediment. Hardly anyone notices now and if they do they say it doesn’t change their view of me. However, when it’s noticed it changes my view of myself. I’m reminded of the shy little girl. I find my shell again and must fight the urge to get back in it. I do fight though and write instead of crawling into my safe shell.
When the time is right I will explore why my speech impediment still hurts so badly when it is in the light. It is part of me and should not hurt me, yet it still does.
For now I will again work on tongue twisters and vocal exercises to overcome my flaws. I will become comfortable with my voice once again. I will remind myself that I’m my own success person. I’m strong and I am loved.
The relationship with my speech is a journey that I may stumble along, but I’m at least making progress and discovering more sides of who I am.
I have more stories that shows how I became who I am. They are in the Journey to Me series. I also have stories specifically about God and of course I wrote a book about my views and experiences with Love called To Love.
I am still a bagel living my bagel life. I wake up and go to work. I come home and some night I hang out with friends.
While sharing conversation and company with my closest friend a question about pain came up. My friend did not ask about sorrow or the pain that came from hardship. His question was more simple. “Can bagels feel pain?” He pondered out loud to the group.
I was off put a little by the idea that the thought even arose in his head. Of course bagel felt pain. Every living thing can feel pain in one way or another. I being a bagel physical feels pain when some one pokes me, squeezes me too tightly in their hands and when they start to cut into my sides. Every time a knife comes near I must declare that I am still living and beg them not to cut me open.
I also feel great emotional pain. I feel this deep sorrow when I see my people sold as slaves to become someone’s breakfast. My heart breaks when I see the joy of a monster biting down on an unfortunate bagel. As that monster bites down on their bagel my soul crumbles as it can feel the mashing and breaking of a fellow bagel.
I am lost in my thoughts of pain as my friends continue to ponder and had almost come to the conclusion that bagel could not feel any type of pain. It was at the conversation’s end that I told them that bagels could feel pain.
The did not believe me and one of the others changed the topic before much more could be said. I did not mind the change in conversation, since I did not want to explain to people who should have known that bagels feel pain.
It appears that this whole “I am a bagel” is starting to be a thing within my group of friends.  I am not fighting it and actually may start a video series about being a bagel. I just need to make/ get a bagel puppet. I say get because it’s just going to be a bagel with olive eyes and pretzel sticks for legs and arms. The friends of a bagel may be difficult to do though.
We shall see what happens with this. I am enjoying writing the short stories at least.
Ghazal
A Ghazal is a poem that is made up of an odd numbered chain of couplets, where each couplet is an independent poem. It should be natural to put a comma at the end of the first line. The Ghazal has a refrain of one to three words that repeat, and an inline rhyme that precedes the refrain. Lines 1 and 2, then every second line, has this refrain and inline rhyme, and the last couplet should refer to the authors pen-name… The rhyming scheme is AA bA cA dA eA etc.
In a meadow I walk
with a friend I do talk.
Among the blooming flowers,
amidst tall bladed grass we talk.
Swept in a fantasy land
our imaginations are explored as we talk.
In a field I walk
with a friend I do talk.
While we converse
we explore all things about talk.
How can language be used
what ways can we talk?
We tell each other about fantasy lands
and let our imaginations talk.
We describe the flowers among us
and hear the words of the grass that we talk.
In open and in nature I walk
with a friend I do talk.
I’m not sure if I did this right. What do you think?
I just scribbled down a fast poem and wanted to get some feed back. I also like how it came out, so wanted to share it with you, my readers.
She waits, she works
she spins and twirls.
Merrily on her way she goes
in a dance that no one knows.
He paces, he panics
He dashes to run races.
Frantically rushing every where
in a rave that no one knows.
They talk, they listen
They move all about
Sweetly whispering and giggling in the other’s ears
in a life no on really knows about.