Words for Empty and Words for Full

So I know

37 So I know He put moisturizer on the morning he shot thirty-three people. That stands out. The desire to be soft. I could tell the guy from NPR that’s what I want, to be soft, or the guy from the LA Times, or the guy from CNN who says we should chat. Such a casual word, “chat.” I’m chatting to myself now. You did not do enough, I write to myself, about the kid who turned in writing about killing a few buildings from where he killed. With soft hands in Norris Hall killed. This is my confession. And legs I think the roommate said, moisturizer in the shower, I don’t know what I could have done something. Something more than talk to someone who talked to someone, a food chain of language leading to this language of “no words” we have now. Maybe we exist as language and when someone dies they are unworded. Maybe I should have shot the kid and then myself given the math. 2 < 33. I was good at math. Numbers are polite, carefree if you ask the random-number generators. Mom, I don’t mean the killing above. It’s something I write like “I put my arms around the moon.” Maybe sorry’s the only sound to offer pointlessly and at random to each other forever, not because of what it means but because it means we’re trying to mean, I am trying to mean more than I did when I started writing this poem, too soon people will say, so what. This is what I do. If I don’t do this I have no face and if I do this I have an apple for a face or something vital hicok pages i-120.indd 37 1/7/10 3:23 PM 38 almost going forward is the direction I am headed. Come with me from being over here to being over there, from this second to that second. What countries they are, the seconds, what rooms of people being alive in them and then dead in them. The clocks of flowers rise, it’s April and yellow and these seconds are an autopsy of this word, suddenly. hicok pages i-120.indd 38 1/7/10 3:23 PM ...