The Scratch and the Tap

An exploration of what writing means to me...

This liquid

Of a certain consistency

Thick enough to flow without making puddles

Thin enough to glide down tubes

Onto mushy trees

Made flat and tidy

With lines, beautifully unblemished

Or with petals if you like pretty things

My life is shaped around the flow

Of one onto the other

Life-blood seeping through fibres

Of hand and brain and heart

I fight it sometimes

Like a child holding her breath - thirty, thirty one, thirty two

Thirty three! Exhale, breathe, breathe.

I can't resist too long without spluttering

Then there are those clots, of pain

or empty bubbles of nothingness

I massage them gently away, by coaxing myself

with tempting colours, metallic choices, scented sheets

All the time I wonder

At the mystery of this trinity

My self, the ink and the page

Intertwined to plot my history

I argue in my head - this need can't be innate.

After all, what would you do if deserted on an island

Or in a prison

Deprived of the necessary implements?

What if I'd been born in a different place

A different age, untaught the ability

To map my insides on the outside

With scratching noises?

I suspect I would invent

My own alphabet (or would that be ^^ *~?)

And begin by etching on wood or stone:-

CS woz ere and she loves NP 4 ever.

Now I face two dilemmas

In this unfolding love affair,

Already unconventional

for being a ménage a trois

Do I let Bentham's ghost, in his utilitarian bliss

Hover over me as I labour,

Inducing guilt, reminding me

I am a fruitless lover, not a pro(fit gainer)?

Like a puritan preacher, shooing away sin

I may choose to refuse mammon in my field of vision.

Then, as I sit down to write, the big eye stares at me

Cooing me into betrayal of the original craft

But being a thoroughly post-modern girl

I refuse to choose. Instead, I weave an eclectic dance

Between the scratching pen

And the neural tap tapping of fingers on plastic

© Concetta Perot

11th October 01

(first draft written by hand)