To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

Tongue on your words to taste you thereCouldn’t   read what youhad never written therePlayed your message overfeeling badPlayed your message over it was all I hadTo tell me what and whereforethis is what it said:I’m tired of you asking me whyI’m tired of words like the chatter of birdsGive me a pass, let me just get by

Was it worth while to lay— with infinite exertion—a roof I can't live under? —All those blueprints, closings of gaps,measurings, calculations? A life I didn't choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do. I'm naked, ignorant, a naked man fleeing across the roofs who could with a shade of difference be sitting in the lamplight against the cream wallpaper reading—not with indifference—about a naked man fleeing across the roofs.

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.