Here’s a cheer for some existentialism thought-
as I cross my legs
being somewhat sandwiched
between Science Fiction
and art critique;
between the Beckett
and Translated Poems from the Sanskrit.His skin like
translucent Chinese Moon
eyes all beady and austere-
those hands:
large, warm and damp.Possibly- (or so they say in GP)
the best things to hold
at 17 and purified-
virginal and terrified;
when all belief and thought
cease to be held on to.In carrels like pews for prayer
I bent my knees and hoped
that reason would come;
come barreling through
this exasperating furrow of silence-
all rage, all worry-
writhing in my insides.
In the darkest moments of decrepitude or awe-filled moments of fleeting inspiration; I feel nothing but a resentment; a deep brooding envy for those who have in their feeble hands, a grasp of expressing their deepest most abstract emotions without having to explain themselves.
Be it their starkest, most undignified scrawl; intentional or unintentional strokes or lack thereof in their art-work; their unmistakenably self-assertive vantage point expressed in the most unique of angles in photographs; or the most awe-inspiring of all, the ability of some to completely mean what they say through music.
The gift of words however; as completely mind-shattering as they can be in the right hands of the most accurate of writers; comes with a guide. An explanation. A foreword, a footnote; a review of the piece in some sort of institution which prides itself over its literary obsession. While music reviews do exist in their millions; you never find Pitchfork having to explain a stroke of the violin as some sort of political manifesto, or the afro-bop a paeon to post-colonial society.
Various savants will of course write long treatises about Shostakovich’s involvement and subsequent rebellion against the Soviet Union, but never will they dissect the pause, the diction and the prose of music as they would to a Rushdie or Nabokov.
There are so many ways of expressing oneself; but only the usage of words could so effectively submit one into a category or an opinion.
Look here. My hands on yours could mean a million and one things that may or may not be a testament of how I would relate myself to you. A faint brush of your skin on mine could mean that far deep inside my writhing organs I desire you for every drop of worth you have. It could mean some sort of naive repressed limerence. Or it’s simply just a touch; a split second coincedence of movement and nothing more.
No sentence structure. No compound-noun subjunctive verb may may not be you I love desire forgive me fear dark deep shadow play of emotions.
With words, whatever I say or commit to paper with my pen is forever inked deep in the surface of how anything and everything will relate back to me.
With everything else, what you do – just is.