My Own Words

            Stopping to think, and using my tongue, a silent and plural speech, writing, how thinking does not stop.

There are clouds, many-layered in many motions, colluding, in sky.

I would see them, were I to face the outside.

Inside,  no difference.

Letting speech beyond.  No beyond, in part.

I had written, earlier, “so not finding my own words…”

A song was playing (is playing, NOW) in which a deep-voiced singer repeats “all thoughts are prey to some beast.”  He repeats the phrase enough times (so that it seems like more than enough) that I hear it: the phrase, his voice, drums and strings.

Earlier it was about trees and soil, beach and sea, which have no language.  I had thought perhaps I did.  “Not finding my own words,” alas.

It makes for quiet.  A banner fastened over the mouth: blood-red, pitch-black.

Begun before, though, the plural.

Taken outside by the hand.  Inside, outside – no difference.  “Not finding my own words,” as earlier.

B called it “weariness” and “infinite conversation,” requiring interruption.  Causing a silence (stubborn, sullen) and a listening (unavoidable, imposed).  Plurality.  “Not finding my own words,” I pilfer.

Dissemination.

The launch – erasing – opposite of launch.

Why I like the word “thrum” (“not finding my own words”) and “inscribe.”

Bent, crooked, stooped over a desk with a lamp of single bulb, I imagine “scribe” as “scholar.”  Inscription going both ways, like tying a knot requires both ends.  Binding.

Such physicality to the immaterial.

As easy as lying (also snatched from a spine).

Stopping to think on how thinking never ceases.

“Not finding my own words” I turn, reverting to the silent plural speech of my mouth’s hand.

I call it “writing,” not finding my own words, even for that.

N Filbert, 2012