There is nothing particularly poetic about the last few days
nothing prosaic too, as a matter of fact.
How do you express numbness
which itself is the pain of an absence of feeling?
I should have learned to paint-
I could paint this desk, or this cellphone here,
and find in it something beautiful or memorable
But words do not work that way-
they are meant to mean something.
Which you and I- we both know-
is often borrowed or imagined,
but when the script is lost
words are like sawdust that abrades the tongue.
i concur
ReplyDeletethe need to to do something other than writing... to break away and paint, or even hold a camera.
words are borrowed. so is the thought of painting when words seem heavy; the entire construct is borrowed. and the new visuals drawn on the cell phone; their meaning too may be borrowed.
what is original is the idea that things are borrowed.
Yes, it is tragic that instinct too must communicate through words
ReplyDeleteThere is this: you can draw or make a photo of a post card, or a fan or whatever and let it speak for itself: though we distort it in the process of taking it in. But the possibility is there. But can we do that with words?
ReplyDeleteI think Blake or someone like him wrote about seeing the universe in a grain of sand. You can put up a photo or picture of the grain of sand, enlarged 100x times or whatever and let it represent whatever it is. But to see the universe in it, you need words and images, and then, the ability to go beyond that.
I don't know this, and I am not going to be dogmatic about this: language is like a girl you are in the process of getting to know (during adolescence). Sometimes you think it is love, sometimes you think it is friendship: but every time, when she has been with you and has gone, you come away confused. You want it this way or that- but whatever it is, you can't get it out of your head. You keep fingering that feeling to get to the bottom of it, but you can't really get done with it.
A good poem should work that way.