Wordletter
by Nico Vassilakis – 2014
staringpoetics.weebly.com/

Yes, the word and letters are distressed
The word can not exist without letters
And letters are designed to make words
What horror
This conflict of opposition

Then sound, then letter, then word, then sentence
Oh yes, sentence, complicated word sequence
Further confused with piles of letters – a collection of sentences
A dotted field of harvested hay
Blah, blah, blah

The word will unclench and let letters fall to the floor
The letter’s prowess to capture the eye inside a word
The word is become effortless and lazy
A lack of focus
Softened without point and in peril

Word
A word
For being a collection of letters

A manufacture
We agree on

With letters
Make words

A manufacture
We agree on

A word vibrates for a moment
And its letters move away and then from each other
The letters glued to the word give way
The letter glue
Letter glue on each side of the letter
Letter after letter adheres to the other
Words form that easily
One letter after another
Then they break
Detach
Just to reconvene
Again
In another word

What horror
This conflict of opposition

Word has an identity problem
Not knowing who he is
Not knowing if he’ll change when the letters change
He is letters after all
Word is a form convenience

A word walks to the edge
and starts dropping one letter after another
What the word means starts to change

The word is recreation
A proxy to whatever we experience
A ball, a bat, a movie, a toy, that Stan Getz Waters of March song that lists items
Lists everything

Where one hand reaches into a box

Letters followed by letters pulled
Box after box
Till a word finds the arrangement of
letters a word should be

And this word will stand for something
Will be applied to an item, an object, a way of going

The tongue has reached its limit and whatever sound
can be made has been made already

And what the eye can see
Words afloat around us
Nailed to every surface and printed on any product we handle

Fine print, gross print, mixed ink, we sink