Room 102

Ah, you are not a fellow Wordeater I see,
so I do not know how best to explain this to you:
you who thinks only in the tangible world
of your own five senses.
You, who argues this did not happen "to me"
when I can assure you it did.

Try this:

I was buried, ensconced.
snuggled on a bed of enchanted stars
as a tapestry already in existence
weaved itself anew over my hungry flesh.
The heavens engulfed me in a blanket of bliss
as the grasses below bent to the shape of my song
and even the angels fell silent to listen.

And then...

Peter came back
and Wendy was old.

('He had never met anyone as alive as Ursula Brangwen or as gloriously wrecked as Heathcliff. No teenager in the world was as likable as Holden Caulfield, no villian as irresistable as Iago...It was the terrible curse readers lived with, that art held out this dream of possible life - of conciousness as gripping narrative, of individuals as violent and epic forces - but actual life undermined it...Great literature was an unsettling revelation, life was just mediocre prose. Exceptions were few and far between.' from Love Remains by Glen Duncan.)


A strange bunch indeed are
We, the Wordeaters.
Instant everything, television stew
The rat-race, the drudge -
All have conspired in our downfall.
None have succeeded
For none can offer us
The alchemy of words.
You can find us in the unlikliest of places,
Chewing thinning lip membrane
And slicing diction across our skins.
We are discernable to the practised eye,
Our responses spattered with
Thoughful pauses and droll dissections
Or silent and cock-headed
As we reach innocuously for our ink tipped shields.
We sit in cinemas, pained and indignant
As we watch another's imagination
Brush clumsy strokes over our own.
But these are letters, mere sweeps of a pen!
Do you not see it,
That they can be arranged in such a way,
These seemingly random symbols,
To give life and love and thought,
That we might fall in love?
Do you not see?
We try to be like you,
We do.
But it is futile.

Anna Russell

We eat words. It's what we do. Big words, small words, similes, verbs, clean words, dirty words: we eat them all. Our diet is varied and does not discriminate (well, except against adverbs - they taste weird).
Welcome. Please, tuck in. There are always seconds.