Text
I keep reminding my students: it’s not lead, it’s graphite -
bears more composite connection to diamonds, to them - not
lead, different stone – pulled from different earth - soil
soul, soiled by gunpowder. Lead leads to links of homo
phones, graphs, nyms; leads to lessons on meta
phor: foreign fatalities, familiar frictions. No, friends,
your writing can’t poison you, not like that anyway. Yes,
there was lead once, in the paint, the yellow shot through,
as they say, pumped full of lead. I wish I could promise the world
was softer now. Graphite is the gentle carbon dreams of.
Wish I could tell you we replaced all the lead in the water, the air,
the bodies, returned to the soil, teleported out as easily as paint -
I wish the only thing that could harm you were words easily erased,
replaced, taken back, trans/muted to something more like gentle.
Pens may brag of strength, hold their own in battle, held the way
we love anything that takes the world down with us, links through
destruction, wounds wound tight together, but this smudge is so much
more promise, potential, not like lead, “the opposite of a gun is whatever
it's pointed at.” Remember, diamonds are forever, and isn’t that a kind
of air, I mean oxy/moron, whatever you choose not to undo is what will
last, isn’t that better than just what knows only how to end?
Note: “the opposite of a gun...” is from Brendon Constantine’s ‘The Opposites Game.’