When they come to slam it down, the audience watches for impact, for force; the rap, the tap, the click, the rhythms of cascading words taram taram taram tam. I know how to water words until they sprout into essays. Eight pages long of comparative poetry, where two great poets meet in front of a backdrop of… But I like the performance art. I do. Visual arts too. But writing is not a visual art in its primary form. It is not there to jazz, not there to tickle the blues, but, conservatively, to place a semblance in words without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because the need for visible art, for performing art, is great. Like gratitude when a thousand people come, love, clap, watch the intertwining dance — hope, unification, like at Sunday Mass. But to reach for a book — that somehow has a different sound. Like going to read the Bible in your own, un-churched room. Like doing your daily workout in a room where no eyes will ever see.