Lately1 I made shapes on paper with paint. Just started an edge and kept going. I hate the saying make bad art when you aren’t making anything at all— because I want to say, no! make good art anyhow! (not in a perfectionist way, but just come on, make something beautiful, don’t make trash, don’t be lazy, the world needs your beauty not more trash- I’m sensing a certain teacher of mine echoing in my head with those words)) But maybe that’s rigid and intimidating and and I guess its suppose to be freeing and unblocking and perhaps there is use to that.
Anyhow this was the first of an alphabet series, and my favorite. Who knows where it came from but it got my hand moving and brought some bright colors and I kinda like it. Paint colorful letters when you aren’t writing or saying much at all and the blocks are all there. And sing.
*
And two old poems about words and language. I kinda feel the need for the first one these days, my reading habits have been atrocious, its a bad addiction at times, and trash for my mind. I must do better. And words have been feeling stale and inadequate and disconnected from truth, for me.
I Want To Wash the World of Words2
I want to wash the world of words
for a seasion, perhaps a year
that sounds ambitions.
I want to wash the world of words,
gather them up
in cloth bags
hang them
in singing, bubbling
fresh water
streams
I want to wash the world of words
pluck them from conversations
sweep them from newspapers, and the pages of books, magazines.
swipe them from signs, menus,
the entire wold of screens— whoosh.
snatch them, use gloves, careful now (shudder)
these ones are toxic— from billboards, junkmail, bills,
i want to wash the world of words
imagine cities
it would be hard there
maybe there’d be massive pile ups
leakages and power outages
confusion
A strange silence might settle
hard not to imagine grief
I want to wash the world of words
imagine entering a restaurant
ordering a meal
would traveling be easier or harder?
Meanwhile, words themselves
would get a rinsing
they would clatter about in the beautiful streams of the world
observed by willows, alders & cottonwoods
left to let water have its way
to rinse them like acorns, washing out the bitter tannins
and years of misuse and casual throw around
and shortening ever further from their beautiful long delicious forms into a few awkward
letters hastily shoved together on a screen
i want to wash the world of words
people would surely turn to music
dance, gestures, touch
how long would it take?
certain cultures would have a headstart no doubt
what would quarreling look like?
world relations
what glorious chaos
lacking words, for a time, would bloom
Animals could keep theirs
plants too
birds of course
even rocks,
those slow speakers of long intricacies
I wonder
would we learn even a phrase of their languages?
given a break from our own?
And then—
sweet alchemy
the re-emergence
of tasting them again
on our tongue
nutrition restored.
The gift of unleashing their song into listening ears, or the paper in front of us
clean, fresh, reinvigorated wild words.
*
Rehatching Words From The Waters of the World3
I once wrote I wanted to wash the words of the world
gather them up
toss them in bubbling gurgling waterways
to be remembered as to where they come from
—did you know?—
Nahuatl — means the sound of running water
what does the world english mean?
the man asked, who had just told me this, sitting in the sun outside the church in Oaxaca
on my first day there
and i did not know.
The sound of running water
they are the people — who speak the sound of running water —
(let that one trickle into your heart a moment)
and English? what is English?
it was invented- so I’ve been told- to kill the old earth ways, to control
my question is this
if a language can be “invented”
and go on to be such a dominant parade of words in the world
squashing out ideas and old musical languages and culture where it goes
well, can the reverse happen? can’t languages resprout?
can’t language regrow, like willow from the banks of those streams?
its not so hard for language to be learned it seems
maybe the stream washing would help English find its way back to earth
the words would start leaping
like salmon
when they were once again
ready to be spoken
creating a ruckus in the water making their way upstream, bringing their very lives to
give life in their deaths
when they remembered who they were
and we did too, unable to use them
for a while
the salmon words would jump from our tongues,
no longer what we once spoke
though perhaps we wouldnt be recognizable as who we once were anymore, either
back in august now…
Probably the winter of 2016/2017. I think it might have been given to my by the trees, by the place I was walking, in a dark deep time on a walk in the dark deep forest, that poured out of me into the recorder of my phone when I got back to the car. I thought it was brilliant at the time (i don’t anymore, but I’m sharing it anyway) and so very encapsulates something I seem to experience often, when words just seem to lose their meaning and go stale and don’t feel alive anymore. It takes work with the english language and our modern ways to keep it fresh. I have certainly been feeling it these days. Feeling oversaturated in my bad reading habits, not to even mention that so much sounds the same these days and is the same…
written sometime circa 2022 or 2023… Inspired by a 2019 visit to Oaxaca.