Author: Reena Saxena

Of companionship,

Of hurt,

Of hunger,

Of territorial brawls,

The birds sing a song,

I pretend to understand their lyrics,

Each and every time,

Of sharing,

Of weather changes,

Of reliability,

Of longevity,

The trees rustle up in unison,

I pretend to understand their music,

Each and every time,

Of a tear’s worth,

Of fear’s fury,

Of their silent pain,

Of uncountable miseries,

An unknown person’s untold concern,

I pretend to understand,

Each and every time,

I could only hear the loud noise,

I could only see the anger,

I cared less for their pain,

I shrugged past their concerns,

My kith and kin’s pain,

I discounted as an endless ramble,

Each and every time.

115 words.

Acknowledgements :- Thank you Reena Ma’am for running the Reena’s Exploration Challenge #135. For rules please refer here. Thank you all for stopping by and reading.

Reena is the host of Reena’s Exploration Challenge.

PROMPT #135

~*~

Listening is a lost art

People may hear you but few really listen

They hear what they want to hear

Their minds already forming the replies

Answers they would give without listening, without understanding

You fall silent

Thinking that it is useless

Words are not heeded

Tones or inflections of speech make no difference

Those who are engrossed in their own lives

Have no time to listen to you,

No matter who you are or what your thoughts are

#Keepitalive

#ReenasExplorationChallenge

“Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,” by Vincent VanGogh

I’m about halfway through Chuck Palahniuk’s new book, “Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything was Different,” and the prompt phrase today reminds me of something Chuck says in it. In the section, Establishing Authority: Your Storytelling Context, he says,

Context and source are more important now than they’ve ever been. So if you were my student, I’d ask you, “Who’s telling this? Where are they telling it? And why are they telling it?”
Palahniuk, Chuck. Consider This (p. 40). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

There is no way to separate the writer from the story. It would be akin to looking at the self-portrait by VanGogh where he is missing his ear and not wondering what the story behind it was.

Everyone is selling something. In the writer’s case, it is a personalized point of view. If…