Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I respect poetry so much because it does what I cannot do - say so much with so little.
When I have something Much to say, it takes me just as many words to say it. I say it with words that are each of them bland and common, unimaginative by their lonesome, with the hopes that if I stack so many together and squeeze a single drop of Much from each that it might flow into something meaningful.
When I have something to say, I say it twice. I say it three times. Because the first or second may not have captured the point. Because I do not trust myself to express the full essence saying it just once. Like just now, those last two sentences. I’ll repeat myself a third time for good measure - because I do not say it right just once or twice.
Poems say things in only a half, only a quarter. They choose single words worth more than ten of mine. I want to know how their minds shop for words. I want to distill myself like poets do. I want to trade in all my too many common words for the way they use an extraordinary few.
If I keep writing this, I’ll write it forever. I’ll explain myself again, as I have already, as I’m doing now. With more and different other words, with the hope of saying myself fully, like how all the hatched and messy wanton scribbles from a pen might finally color in a page. I want to change that. I want to not rip the page I’ve oversaturated by the tip of my pen.
I’ll start tomorrow, maybe, to explain myself less.
And overhead, the stars have done what I have done—have spent the day spinning and whirling beyond sight, unhoused and absent—meaningless. But now, the night
complete, the stars and I assemble in our usual places, shining, as always, in a litany of fresh and ancient betrayals.
Leslie Harrison, from “Home — as hiking”, Displacement
