I am struck, again, by the slowness of this process of dipping a quill into an ink pot and writing: one word, a series of letters, making the short marks that form the patterns we call language. Added to this the immediate fixity of the word, the permanence. I suppose there are ways of editing the hand-written but for the purposes of this InkTober challenge I am choosing to leave the marks as they come. If I had been writing this on a computer, I would already be editing, changing ‘lull’ to ‘fug’ or ‘fog’ and then back again possibly, or adding a syllable here or there for rhythmic consistency. As it is, the raw work, faces me on the page. It is.
A precious evil
he shows us why truth
matters, when respect
falls, where decency
staggers, how generosity
dies, what ‘freedom’
incarcerates and buries
in unmarked graves.
He is the flaming beacon
on our deadliest shore
(o it’s always been there)
in his bleaching glare
it must be mapped
we must lose no more
ships in the precious lull
we call civilised society.
another kind of happiness 