Lichen and strangeness

photo: graustark

Shy, in the willing gardens

black words wander and

bearing all they stop

with their stinging bards

downstream

(the white water)

the usual overwhelming

bliss glares and ripens

there is lichen in my hands

under night’s naked skies

I wrote this by reading a German poem and writing down what I felt the words were saying, based purely on how they sounded.  So if it makes no sense, that is why. But I kind of like the weirdness. In his Little Red Writing Book, Mark Tredinnick has a little treatise on strangeness. He writes:

"There's something strange about the best writing. No one, you think at first, ever spoke like this. But soon, in what is odd, you recognise the sound of authenticity."

I like strange writing that flows from instinct, that isn't over thought. I wish I could do it more often.