Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Today I Am Not Good with Words

But today, mon cher, I am not good with words. I say what people already know.

Very dark brown hair, long, pulled back loosely with wisps softening around the face, I think. I've never seen her; shall never gaze upon a photograph. She wears a veil of words.

Perhaps a blackness of cloth, but not without red. Brooch of a poppy. Toss of bead earrings, like Native American dream catchers. Or that ruby rising out of a ring of melted, cast sun, the only one on her hands woven with pale veins and the delicacy of a musician's fingers. Open her closet and you will find on the floor red canvas tennis shoes, red satin Chinese slippers, patent leather ruby red heels, red slick knee-high boots. On the shelf, a vinyl red belt, red silk sashes, red opera gloves, a red felt hat. Dragging down the wall like Barnett Newman's "Lema sabachthani," a funerary dirge of black dresses, a heavy curtain of silk, cotton, corduroy, rayon, wool on cedar-scented hangers.

Her writing, its own fertile garden, overflows with the redness of a sensuality that is both innocent and over-ripe, tended and unweeded, like Oscar Wilde's "Salome," if the woman who holds the platter on which the prophet's head rests could write. Or a mass of cut flowers in varying stages, some dying, some bursting forth; floral, with dark passion.

One doesn't know the true story or if there are any true stories.

Why am I, along with others, silenced? She speaks in the diminutive. Sarcasm of a parrot, words twisted in the ruffle of virid and cinnabar feathers, inside the sharp beak. Have I found someone to blot my laboured writing? It becomes unbearable, the denouncer's voice. Do I imagine a fertile slope for my Sisyphian ball of letters but where I don't belong, and why can't I turn and go elsewhere? Where welcomes wait?

3 comments:

  1. Your words pour across the table, winding around the old coffee cup, soaking the corner of a blue napkin, and following an unseen streambed to the edge of the table where they begin to fall, before taking flight...

    "She speaks in the diminutive. Sarcasm of a parrot, words twisted in the ruffle of virid and cinnabar feathers, inside the sharp beak. Have I found someone to blot my laboured writing?" whew

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  2. Anonymous9:10 PM

    """Sarcasm of a parrot, words twisted in the ruffle of virid and cinnabar feathers, inside the sharp beak. Have I found someone to blot my laboured writing? It becomes unbearable, the denouncer's voice. """ I am amazed at the depth of your empathy. Cheers, Bill (Vex)

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  3. Narrator, you managed this beautiful thing... you've come by and written writing that is poetry inspired by my writing, or effort at it, and affirmed me as a writer at the same time! Thank you, you wonderful person.

    Bill, what a lovely surprise! Surely a writer does have to have empathy - as you do with your many poems for people you know who are going through difficulty.

    This is a second version, and completely fictionalized from the first one. It was based on something that really happened and when I saw an email from the woman who had unfairly received the criticism against her beautiful and caring words I thought she recognized it, but no, whew. This story is wanting to grow, so I may try to expand it at Faema (the Italian coffee shop, maker of the city's best espresso and 5 minutes from here) this morning. A longer version might not be good to post - if that happens though, should I post it?

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___