Dictator of All Things Dictionary

when I was little, I wanted to work with words.

I wanted my voice to be heard

amidst all the noise of all the others in the world

I wanted to construct skyscrapers built of verbs, towering miles above Earth…

but unlike Babylon, my goal was never heaven

and it wasn’t the sun.

I wanted to dictate diction and denotation

I wanted to influence the population

with meaning and connotation.

I wanted everyone’s vocabulary

to grow and increase exponentially,

and maybe then, potentially…

we’d finally know the meanings

of “peace” and “love” and “human beings.”

when I was little I wanted to work with letters.

I thought that, somehow, things would get better

if we figured out how to arrange them in a way

where we’d get across what we meant to say

instead of tripping over tongue tied attempts to communicate.

I wanted to lift society out of this fog

of unintellectual dialogue

consisting of acronyms, abbreviations and mnemonics

like “YOLO” and “LOL” which both sound idiotic.

when I was little, I wanted to work with words.

but now at eighteen I find it absurd

to try to control the puppet master-

the king of everything that screams “disaster.”

but at eighteen, I still want to work with language

because there is no greater fragrance

than published words on untouched pages.

when I was little, I didn’t want to be

a dentist, a lawyer or doctor.

I wanted, and still want, to be an author.