Curses and Stickpins

Writing is to speaking
as burnt hair is to lightning;
perhaps this is why
I prefer to draw.

Writing is sandbox to the battlefield,
it is play full grown. To speak is to stage. I find my pleasure
in the press of charcoal to soft, cream paper. I find my pleasure
where I will.

To speak of writing requires something fermented,
sticky and sick and ghastly sweet, left to
congeal in a pickle jar poorly rinsed.
Wouldn't you rather hold that bottle,
tilt it to the side, note the viscosity
then put it back on its homemade wooden shelf,
and back out of the room, and quietly shut the door?

I am concerned mostly with Rube Marquard,
and opal, and a curse:
I have lived in this city for ten
long years, and the traffic reports still sound to me
like spells, powerful hexes
that leave me foreign and affected.

I have flung totems into rivers before, into cold waters,
and it's not such an odd sentiment--if
these were older moments, we might even ask some god
of sweep and dissolution to protect us,
to carry away all poisons. We will lose
games, and pen the articles
of frustration, and later, when everyone else is gone,
we will gather the words unused, and make a little joke
for those that loved us anyway
as if to say "I'm sorry, it was always a third thing."