Thirty-four Words

Thirty-four Words

I knew you before you 

had hairs on your chest, before

they clustered like old men

round a pub table, backs curved;

and though the silence is deep

and hollow,

I know you still.

A Certain Work in Progress

Deaf-Blind Signing

                        For O

fingers that encase gently, & more soft

than the shell of a hermit and kind.

flesh curved & velveteen concave the

undulating mouth of conch                 ring box

precious & held cargo, flesh & communication

to be known or at the very least react

digits tangle & multiply, segregate the

movement fluid into a meaning or

something that means something else

like a word                  a transfer         language = the ability to refer to something not there

something of flesh to flesh:

in skin there is so much touch that is not tactile

of opening & closing, presses & retreat

closeness, the intimacy of a pinch

a kite tacking under unseen pressures

soft & hard

      squeeze

laking as together as together

it is fragile, the as, a kind of comparison

&almost a mask, something to pretend behind, something false & that is not certain or comfortable in what it is. that reveals a lot. although to be comfortable in what something is is not everything

The sweat on our skin held us.

He will sketch out his communicative aim in the future perfect tense

The project of the speaker is always a matter of imaginative reconstruction for his interpreter and so is attended by a certain vagueness and uncertainty.

He said this isn’t what I meant to happen.

The First of Many

I had a lot of trouble thinking what to call this little external cupboard of my brain. When confronted with something which, I suppose, is intended to sum a person up or at least give an idea of who You Are, I found myself scrabbling for all kinds of grandiose literature-licking words (‘ephemeral’, ‘dreaming’) and wracking my brains for some kind of interesting hobby or character trait that would hopefully impress and ingratiate me to you, the unseen reader. I settled eventually on ‘Place to Be’ -a shamelessly stolen title of the wonderful song by Nick Drake on his 1972 album, Pink Moon.  Nick Drake is one of those musicians who I think will always be in my life, if that's not too pretentious a statement. There are those musicians and albums that come and go, cherished  for maybe a few months or years but sink back into the ether after a while, welcomely exhumed every now and then but largely laid to rest. Nick Drake, though, is someone to listen to any time. A keeper. The fragility of his songwriting has a melodious benevolence that, I think, is similar to the continual generosity of a favourite book...one that Just Keeps Giving, no matter how many times you read it. You know the ones: a gentle, kind constant. Very sentimental, I know. But I do like to allow myself these moments, despite their danger. 

This place of being (whatever that pertains to...linguistic, representational, personal, cyber-spatial) I hope will be a place to exercise nerve pathways that seem to have dissolved significantly over the summer. I want to it be a place where I can put down and make coherent thoughts that would otherwise pass through my brain neglected. A space for a few passing thoughts that, given a little attention, could be of some value in extricating. I want what I write here to be honest and considered: not just throw-away comment that I'll look back on within the week and regret. Although that's fine too -maybe it'll be a place of rage sometime. A friend of a friend once said that he tried not to do anything his Grandfather wouldn't do, and although I wouldn't adopt this maxim for all areas of life, I reckon what's behind it is pretty sound. (This friend is also the one who after graduating did away with his mobile phone so I may be enamoured with this statement rather than the one above, I'm not sure.) Although there'll no doubt be things that I do write that I'll not stand by when I look back on, that's the way it should be otherwise I wouldn't have changed or grown in that time. I'm not attempting  to carve out a monument or structure of What I Think: I realise what I write and my thoughts are contained only to these moments and are informed only by what I know now. Who knows what I'll know in a few months? But that is being and what it is to exist and be a person. It's also why I think 'Place to Be', albeit a little bit sanctimonious, will do nicely.