You know you might be a poet when you sit inside the Kaiser waiting room writing poetry about ponytails and scrubs and taking photos of the stack of books you just took out of your bag to review during your fifteen minute wait. I created a whole world about a woman today in navy blue scrubs with kites on the top and a high swinging pony tail a la Marcia or Jan Brady.
Seriously? She must have graduated high school in 1987. Put away the high ponytail at work. You may wear it if you are cleaning or decluttering or holding your miracle baby who constantly grabs any hair within grabbing range but please, that Marcia-Jan swing must leave the building now.
You know you’re a poet when you sit among storytellers and two use the word “periscope” and two use the words “inner sanctum” and you vow to consistently stay away from those words. Do these people not own a thesaurus? Did they not hear the person so close to them in our performance line up that they didn’t come up with an alternate version of their piece with a different phrase for inner sanctum (why not exclusive hideaway or hidden room or private bunker) or something else that reaches up in order to “see” like a periscope does (perhaps an elephant’s trunk reaching to the top of the palm tree.)
You know you’re a poet when the phrase You know you’re a poet begins to sound like a more than a fender bender car crash in a major intersection or like Jeff whatever-his-surname-is repeating “You might be a redneck if….” And I immediately flash to my visitor from Austria last night, explaining about the term “redneck.” I pointed to a guy as he got out of his pickup wearing wranglers and throwing a bud light can into the trash: “Do you see how his neck looks?”
“So leathery and red.”
“Exactly. “
Even so, let’s think about more original ways we might say, “You know you’re a poet when….”
How about ….
It finally comes clear that you are not an ordinary lover of words when….
The light comes on: you do not think like every other person who calls herself a writer out there when…
The word-vault creaks open to reveal you are not an ordinary writer when….
Alice Rawsthorne wrote “Cliché is an ugly word and seems all the uglier when applied to something that is thoughtful, original and ingenious but has come to seem clichéd through no fault of its own.”
“You know you’re a poet” or “You might be a poet when…” reminds me of a ringing phone lost in the bottom of your purse. You have to find it and answer or shut it off before everyone in hearing distance looks at you as if you are an old banana someone forgot to throw away.
I would love to hear some of your creative ways to say... whatever cliche or overused expression you are completely sick of hearing.... let's get the laughter ball in the air....
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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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