No one dead will ever
read these words,
and those alive now
will sweep them from the streets.
The writing of our time most
likely to survive is graffiti.
It survives war.
read these words,
and those alive now
will sweep them from the streets.
The writing of our time most
likely to survive is graffiti.
It survives war.
—Chase Twichell
What language does the mind
speak before thinking, before
thinking gives birth to words?
I tried to write without embellishment,
to tell no lies while keeping death in mind.
—Chase Twichell
NOTES
—“No is not the opposite of anything” stated by Melissa Myōzen Blacker, Rōshi, a Sōtō Zen priest with the Boundless Way Zen Temple, discussing the Mu koan.
—Top: Chase Twichell from her poem Skeleton in Dog Language (2005)
—Above: Chase Twichell from her poem How Zen Ruins Poets in Horses Where Answers Should Have Been
—Below: Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka (1921-2017), In Praise of the Unfinished: Selected Poems (trans from Polish, 2008)
It Is Also This
Art casts a spell summoning life
so it can continue
but its space extends to the invisible
It is also an intelligence reconciling
discordant elements and similarities
It is brave
because it seeks immortality
by being—just like everything else—mortal
—Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka
