by Priscilla Barton
Dorothy Parker said, "Writing is easy. You just sit at your typewriter and think, until tiny beads of blood form on your forehead." I know how to bleed. My veins hold poetry.
My fingers can talk. I am poet. I will not answer to another name. There is poetry
inside me. The sun lives in the lining of my skin. The moon sleeps in my bones. I have nothing to say. I have said everything. I have said nothing. My hands keep reaching. I am lost, and I am found. I am not quite real. You are not quite real. I am a small stone and a large mountain. My eyes are rivers. The wind in tall grass is me. The rain is my sister. I am a slow dance without shoes. I am smoke and mirrors. A cheap trick. A mystery. A contradiction. I am a raging inferno. I am ash. There is poetry inside me. I am Niagara Falls. I am the leak in my faucet. I am a drifter. I am the stranger at my door. You are my lover of words. I am your lover. I am food. I am poet.
Speaking of poets, I'd love for you to read a poem by William Bronk. The simplicity
of his words left me with an ache.
Writing You
What I should do is phone; the circuitry is there and we're both somewhere in the circuitry. I need to talk. What should I find to say? You know how it is: it rings; you answer; no click; no dial tone. Hello? Hello? No word. Not even goodbye, - I couldn't give you that.
Listen to this: to write you requires a scheme, subtends an apparatus, such that here be an I, you be he there, space discerns the entities, depicts them such as the scheme requires. Are you lost? I am. I want to be not lost. I write even so.
Tell me what to do. I want to show. Schemelessness. Undress. To speak from that. I want the secrecy. I want it said. To speak from wordlessness. There are certain things that happen and we don't know; proteins meet and shape each other. We are the husk of this.
Whatever happens happens in some such wise,
under attention. I hate all huskiness.
Let me be where it happens, let me be the hidden cells and silent if silence is all there is to say. I want to talk though. I want to talk to you. I despair of what to say. Goodnight. Goodnight.
by William Bronk
***
Because it's my column, I get to have the last word. I leave you with one of my poems, and some sage advice. Make love, and read poetry!
These Hands
My hands talk to each other; remind
themselves how shoulder blades were
once traced along your back.
They reach for familiar skin; stretch
out like ivory fans. These hands, not
ready for so much space.
Their fingers rub my temples; ask
me why. Poor things, cannot grasp
the concept of gone.
Weary of hanging at my side, they
come together, palm to palm; plead
like beggars for one more touch.
***
Peace to all.