Writing life into words afflicts some of us.
It’s maddening when our best is too good for print.
Like being over-qualified, I suppose.
We are men of letters in an unlettered dark time.
There is a basic distinction to be made.
Some writers are commercial.
They supply what ever product sells at the time.
Commercial grade extruded fiction product.
Making money is their goal.
Success they measure in ledgers of word count, pay rate.
Then there are the poetry-sodden folly-ridden fools like us.
We write for story’s sake, to capture the ineffable.
We tell the untold truths and make them beautiful.
We see joy where others scrape off blood-clotted mud.
We paint invisible vistas dabbed and dappled in words alone.
A few lines, a turn of phrase suffices to send
A glint or gleam resonating in us.
We respond, radar pinging unseen threat
But for us it’s promise, potential, a desired release.
Junkies needing fixed, butterflies craving points, stuck on
The entomology of literate existence; pinned,
Each word a penetration deeper into our experience.
Found in fixed form long after we are dust,
We write down what we can grab, make marks
So few can decipher into our translated explosive love.
Yes, love: Of life in words. A meeting, a parting. Pen to page a pairing, paring toward our core;
A binding of now to then and ever, always new.
How can we remember what others have known? Words,
Set down so carefully, soap bubbles that carve stone.
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252 words, 30 lines written while in text conversation (FB messaging, really), with writer and friend John Claude Smith, Samhain, 2013 C.E. Now for some lunch. Emended, All Saints, 2013 C.E.
