#writing itself

I want my name to mean something to strangers in dim rooms who underline my sentences like they're mapping constellations I didn't know I'd made

I want dog-eared pages spines cracked like old knuckles coffee rings sanctifying margins where someone wrote, this saved me

In this version of me I am quoted in quiet conversations between people who feel too much and don't know what to do with it until they find me

I sign books like I belong there like the ink knows my hand like I was always meant to be permanent

They say my words out loud like prayers they don't believe in but need anyway

And somewhere, somehow a kid sits on the edge of their bed reading me under bad lighting thinking, maybe I'll survive this too

That's the dream, isn't it? Not the fame not really

Just to exist beyond your own breaking point to become something that lingers after you've gone quiet

But tonight it's just me and a blinking cursor that doesn't care who I could be

still…

Writing itself:

not always translated – somethings resist a poet’s words. It’s the experience that matters, and no retelling will ever quite capture a moment gone. Yet writing itself provides a few transcendent moments of its own. Released from pursuit of what to tell, allowing myself as space to be found by words that wish themselves written – it all comes to be a perfect flow of listening, received by words, and the grace of fingers touched on keyboards. It’s the experience itself, writing, and not a wish for anything beyond this moment.

of course often there is a chase for words, a keen desire to write of something that is clearly wordless in its true encounter. Zen poets have long ago mastered the art of saying little with great impact, offering not so much a description but a meeting with the present moment, even as it was written long ago. A master’s art is timeless.

my goal is always simple, indeed, it’s a wish for simplicity itself. I care about arrangement, that the gift of words, so purely given, should find themselves in certain order. I am less an author than one who arranges words on their arrival, listening to the sound they offer against the silence of between. Every pause, each word, matters to my care, there is a trust to this arranging.

my goal is to honor what arrives.

and mostly it’s always a surprise, that writing is its own agenda, and that I belong to its expression – at best, in moments of that perfect flow, there is no true message, no experience to be told. It’s the writing itself, from first words dropped in silence, my smile, listening to their sound, and patience, however eager, to see what more (if anything) unfolds.

it’s the experience itself that matters.

~

Writing itself:

not always translated – somethings resist a poet’s words. It’s the experience that matters, and no retelling will ever quite capture a moment gone. Yet writing itself provides a few transcendent moments of its own. Released from pursuit of what to tell, allowing myself as space to be found by words that wish themselves written – it all comes to be a perfect flow of listening, received by words, and the grace of fingers touched on keyboards. It’s the experience itself, writing, and not a wish for anything beyond this moment.

of course often there is a chase for words, a keen desire to write of something that is clearly wordless in its true encounter. Zen poets have long ago mastered the art of saying little with great impact, offering not so much a description but a meeting with the present moment, even as it was written long ago. A master’s art is timeless.

my goal is always simple, indeed, it’s a wish for simplicity itself. I care about arrangement, that the gift of words, so purely given, should find themselves in certain order. I am less an author than one who arranges words on their arrival, listening to the sound they offer against the silence of between. Every pause, each word, matters to my care, there is a trust to this arranging.

my goal is to honor what arrives.

and mostly it’s always a surprise, that writing is its own agenda, and that I belong to its expression – at best, in moments of that perfect flow, there is no true message, no experience to be told. It’s the writing itself, from first words dropped in silence, my smile, listening to their sound, and patience, however eager, to see what more (if anything) unfolds.

it’s the experience itself that matters.

~

Writing itself:

not always translated – somethings resist a poet’s words. It’s the experience that matters, and no retelling will ever quite capture a moment gone. Yet writing itself provides a few transcendent moments of its own. Released from pursuit of what to tell, allowing myself as space to be found by words that wish themselves written – it all comes to be a perfect flow of listening, received by words, and the grace of fingers touched on keyboards. It’s the experience itself, writing, and not a wish for anything beyond this moment.

of course often there is a chase for words, a keen desire to write of something that is clearly wordless in its true encounter. Zen poets have long ago mastered the art of saying little with great impact, offering not so much a description but a meeting with the present moment, even as it was written long ago. A master’s art is timeless.

my goal is always simple, indeed, it’s a wish for simplicity itself. I care about arrangement, that the gift of words, so purely given, should find themselves in certain order. I am less an author than one who arranges words on their arrival, listening to the sound they offer against the silence of between. Every pause, each word, matters to my care, there is a trust to this arranging.

my goal is to honor what arrives.

and mostly it’s always a surprise, that writing is its own agenda, and that I belong to its expression – at best, in moments of that perfect flow, there is no true message, no experience to be told. It’s the writing itself, from first words dropped in silence, my smile, listening to their sound, and patience, however eager, to see what more (if anything) unfolds.

it’s the experience itself that matters.

~

"Don't be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together."