13 August 2018

I want to write an honest sentence. Humility has to do with the soil, my neighbor tells his son. To be soiled is another thing. We draw in the word “dignity” only to dignify our choices: the retirement home radiates the word in its tables and chairs. There's nothing plastic about dignity. I refuse to dignify his tweet about lowlifes and low IQs; he's at the level of humility, but not playing it well. Shit might be the better word, its clean crisp sound. He said my poem seemed more finished than most, which meant that it had ended, like the final “t” sound of lock on a shed door. She cannot bear to take her lover's toothbrush out of their cup. He takes pictures of his empty house. She describes her dreams, gets her telephone number right, but he's gone, nonetheless. I would like to see a decent country again before I die, the poet writes to me. On the eve of my 60^th, I think about death and country, numbers and tooth brushes. Nothing seems trivial, or all. The printer reads “brother”; the dog under my bed snores. There will be no secret recordings. The distinction between pain and suffering is worth noting; suffering is pain after you think about it. To render hurt into language is to suffer from it. It is hurt, but it is also sound. Sound clots like blood where the wisdom tooth was. Patrick Wisdom got his first major league hit. Wisdom is the ribbon at the end of the race; we cut through it with our flailing bodies. When I dreamed in French, I couldn't speak it, but everyone else's trilled. I was at the grocery store counter, trying to buy my goods. The air smelled of grilled chestnuts and the film ended in very slow motion.

--13 August 2018