The Poet In Me
I killed her the other day, it was a Wednesday,
when I started to read the ingredients in my hand soap.
It contains long words I don't understand and I don't know why
there is blank in my hand soap. I can't spell the word and I don't remember
it. Then I wash my hands with warm water.
And realized all words are the same, whatever they are describing.
Are there superior words or word combinations
that speak more to beauty and truth? Is my word better
then your word? Or is it all just the same:
the sign at the dry cleaners, the brochure at the travel agency.
They are saying things these words. Saying things about
the world and us and they are just combinations
of lines that have become symbols. We think we have something better than
hieroglyphics. But these are just pictures of our song.
What exactly are we singing to each other? What is the meaning
of all this sound? If I had something to say I would have said it by now.
But I have nothing left as I search for a good tomato
at the grocery store. I have held the bad tomatoes in
my hands. I know the difference, I can recognize
a rotten thing. My words have become stale, they don't
have any more promise. I died the day I could not say
the thing that was in front of me. I can no longer describe
what is happening to this life. I cannot think of the right
words to tell you I am done. I am finished with all of this.
This is just a fancy suicide note, where I tell you why I did it.
Why I could no longer stand the small indignities of language.
We say a thing as if we own it, as if we have labeled the universe
in our tongue and now it is ours. The word kangaroo is just a
bunch of syllables put together in a particular order. The word does
not exist, the the animal does, but just because we have named it
does not mean we are allowed to kill it. You can name your children
but they are not really yours just because you gave them a reference point
for an identity. Nothing is ours, it all belongs to something else.
I don't even think my life is my own. Other people have bought it
at the second-hand store. I am used, I am ripped at the edges and
I am falling apart. Do you still want to buy me? Take me home?
The words I create are not my own, as soon as I express them they belong to
to the world. I want them back. I want to hold on to the noises that I make
that create meaning. Without this there is nothing, I am nothing.
The poet in me has left the room. She has packed her bags and walked
away. I no longer have anything to say.
nina