I suppose I could lie.
It’s easily done and even that can be forgiven
If the lie is good enough and smooth enough
And leavened with a touch of the truth.
What’s fiction but a lie well told?
I could lie but the truth is
Our trade begins in magic.

That’s all.
That’s the whole of it.
That’s all we know.

What’s the use of saying silence helps?
Noise may help too. The call of the cuckoo
I hear thee and rejoice
Or the stuttering orisons of . . . but you know that one.
No use framing a law that contradicts itself.
Even in our trade.

But I offer you a contradiction instead:
All words disrupt silence
But the only ones that echo
Are born in the silence they destroy.

It could be the flaming of a flower at noon
The ancient red unease at the full moon
The startling indeterminacy of dusk
Or a lost lover’s musk.
If you can’t remember, go ahead,
Invent.

There are some letters about this somewhere
If I can find them . . . no
So you’ll have to do without.
I warn you, there’s a lot of doing without
In this trade.

It wasn’t always like that.
There was a time we were stars.
Rock stars? Nothing on us, then.
They only want to fuck rock stars.
Us they wanted to swallow whole,
Such was the yearning.

Eyes round and yearning, they listened to us
For it was not a story we told
But flesh we put on their bones.
We turned them round and showed them
Who they were and who they could be.

We were memory. We were history.
We were ritual. We were community.
We held the secrets. We told their lies.
We were monstrance. We were scroll.
We were labyrinth. We were sanctum.
We were spire. We were libation.
We were all they needed,
And when the moon was full and silver
As the coins they dropped into our bowls
We invented their world.
What am I saying?
We invented them.

We’re still at it.
Only the reinvention business is a little crowded these days.
Our hieroglyphs aren’t profane enough
Our ancientness is not new enough
Our black and white is blurry grey.
Don’t go there. Don’t even try.
What is real is this. You. Me.
And between us not even enough money for a cutting chai
And a cigarette.

Don’t smoke?
You’ll find your vice.
Only don’t let it be words.

Words, words, words, he said 400 years ago
Even before the pocket book revolution.
What do you think he’d say now as the words
Pour in a thick sludgy militant flood out of every profligate mouth?
Words, words, words, words?
Words, words, words, words, words?
Words, words, words, words, words, words?
Words-words-words, Words-words-words, Words-words-words?

He’d be breaking his own laws?
I’m breaking mine too, see?
That’s what we do.
We break their laws.
Which is why we sit alone on this lonely arid plateau called language
And we drop our turdwords wordturds turdturds wordwords and fertilise
The soil for them that follow, for the bankers and milliners and armies
For the sandpaper tongues that buff our jagged edges.

And at the end, there are no guarantees
The jungles outlive us.
Our lines die with us.
The worst shall be first.
And the bile with which we sought to cure the world
Turns toxic in our throats

So I have a word of advice for you:
RUN