This is how I eat my words.

1 Let me tell you a secret:

In the first-ever writers workshop I attended, panelists extolled the virtues of imagist poetry. One even told us to write down ten images everyday. Most of us, most of the time, take the world in visually, yes. But this exercise was not only to help us actively capture these visual feeds, but to reproduce them in words, and in words that will repaint these images for the reader.

Very sound advice, I think. But I worried that my brain doesn't work this way. I think in concepts, then look for images to represent them. Insecure, I asked one writer what if. What if I do it this way? She looks at me(was it pity I saw in her eyes?): Then maybe poetry is not for you, she announced.

Well, Fuck that shit is my very concise and very image-riddled answer to that one. If for nothing else, I will make a great adobo of these seven words--sprinkled with some of my poems to taste--and feed them to her.


2 But. This is how I eat my words:

That I can just pluck past experiences and use them in my poems now like so much fodder. And still not enough.

Is this a writer's life? That moments beautiful, bizarre, heart-breaking later on serve to tell a story, to execute an effective line? How pathetic. To look back and cull from past images to serve a present need. An ever-present need to write.

I have never owned a camera, never needed it. Events in my life have gone undocumented this way. I always thought pictures diminished experiences to the whats, whos, whens, and I have always gone for the hows and whys. But if these pictures in my head find themselves in my poetry, and without their true context--those whats whos and whens--won't I, in a different way, be losing them too?

I imagine myself old and wrinkled, rifling through a box of yellowed poems. Will I wish for photographs instead?


3 Enough. Two poems:

Gretel in Love/Lost

As if words were crumbs leaving a trail to my emotions
I have retraced my steps, picked every surface clean.

You were the one with
Words for everything:
Tobi, you said, tracing circles
The flight of some bird with your finger.
Later, my own fingers traced through words
In search for meaning:
Tobi. A bird of prey--

And that was how it was
With me circling and circling
Words like so many crumbs
Hints to a road I cannot follow.
Or won't.

If these should lead to a house
I have lived that story.
Once.


Reflection
aaaaWager then without hesitation that He is.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Blaise Pascal

Forgive me my love
I have turned my back on you.
Fidelity was all you required. And waiting
I spent my time looking at mirrors.

In my bedroom in the glass
Men have come and gone behind me.
Like clouds over a lake pass shift dissolve
With every drop
Their features shattered rippled into your face

As if heaven and earth finally met.

I began to believe they were you
That you were everywhere.
Or I refused to look closer.

In the mirror my eyes dark and brown
Like coins in still waters.


4 Poet vs. Scientist:

A poem by (a certain) Jacques Prevert, "Les paris stupides:" goes:

"Stupid wagers:
One Blaise Pascal
etc... etc..."

Is Pascal in heaven? And what if Prevert is there too? Are they friends? Did God make them shake hands and kiss each other on both cheeks after introducing them? Was Prevert embarrassed? Did God have to admonish Pascal for feeling a bit smug? Or was he generous and waved Prevert's apologies aside?

What if they were both in hell? Is Prevert still razzing Pascal? Is Pascal feeding Prevert infinite number of pages with "Les paris stupides" printed on them?

You see how in both cases it's the poet who eats his words? Food for thought.

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