A Poem For Friday

“What the Pencil Writes” by James Laughlin:

Often when I go out I

put in my coat pocket

some paper and a pen-

cil in case I want to

write something down

well there they are

wherever I go and as

my coat moves the pen-

cil writes by itself

a kind of gibberish

hieroglyphic which I

often think as I un-

dress at night & take

out those papers with

nothing written on

them but strange and

meaningless marks is

the story of my life.

(From The Collected Poems of James Laughlin, 1935-1997, edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Glassgold © 1995 by James Laughlin. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Photo by Oscar Cortez)