About Drawing Words
by Ashton Carless
1
The cursory skipping against the sides
of the boxes that hold my thoughts.
My will to write exchanges
with a machine I cannot see.
2
Everything is framed in at least one way,
some things in more ways than everything I could say
right now, to you.
I could describe the sense of seeing what it is
I am controlling.
The little tapping squares that hold and relay
the fragments in particles of eventual, collectable meaning.
I do not wish to be false.
I do wish to be true.
To myself, to you, to the computers, to God,
and whoever else sees this, reading the words I
cannot help writing.
3
I do all the things you can imagine I do,
I am not very much different than who it is I am.
Inside and secretive and never endingly, willfully
aware of the seconds passing.
I think I like writing because it feels so much like time.
Like you could, as an overly descriptive metronome would,
spell out every second passing.
4
Like all the sand that's ever been in the deserts of all the world,
over and over.
Leaving and being eviscerated and coming back from nowhere,
under the sun again.
5
Like a bird and a fish both, like them both not being able to stop
anymore. Like the circumstances of their limbs latently doing almost all
the work, and they do like to watch the movement of their own body like
this.
6
The filament of data is projected outwards into space and magnified.
Adapting the shadow, the object's source is shaded. Or a shade of itself
is what you can actually see. And what moves, against the white wall of
the screen, holds a memory, as do you, too.
I think this is like information, and words. Count out all the times it
changes through the medium it must travel past, towards any final
destinations. Be it another person or a computer screen. And if
compressionless entirely,
it nonetheless shifts.
7
To be indelible upon the very surface of history.
See then write, about that which you can see,
and all in all it could be.
Take a walk outside and forget about it:
pencils or computers, forget the perfect words.
And forget any record of it,
that you might now, right now, want to keep.
8
Can I prompt you well with only the nature of how I say this? I want to be
so good at this because I am trying with all my strength. I am not me at
my worst. I swear, I will learn the language of secret sources of power,
and responsibility. And it might kill me, or imprison me, or take away all
my pencils, or keep me from everywhere I have ever known and loved.
I really believe these forces remain all around this world.
The will to be around the kind of good and evil I entertain is why. I know
this sounds like just words. I know that it takes real life to spell out these
effects. And that my real life is plain, that the extremes are but shallow
valleys cut by a young, and underwatered river, more rocky than
anything else. The fact of this knowledge is itself useful. I am most like,
and not, the many people in my life everyday.
And I am all that history has ever made me, all those who died before,
for me to do these petty evils and minor goods. All the ghosts
weightlessly turning past every hair upon my skin. Every second the sun
catches me right I forget to thank you. Even when I cannot remember
your names, or never wished to know them. Even when it is entirely
impossible to read them on any sort of document, never being certain
that this is who you are, and this is why I am so. I am wishing you what's
best, however I can, for the ways you are always a part of me.