167. stitching+writing

I am trying to follow
the thread of your words
and there is a thread
to the pictures you make

A stitched word holds
something in place
(it may be a thought)
allowing for sight

Leave a word stitched
in the face of a postcard
and I might see the
topography of its meaning

Rising up out of a white
field is the simple shape
of a thought and it may
be a delicate light blue

Maybe your message to me
is my message returned
in the form of stitching
ink transformed into thread

Your message is a picture
just as this message of mine
to you is nothing but a set
of pictures of words

You hear in your eye
the taste of a word so
you make me smell it
by touching its surface

A word is a thing of
the body and the body
makes sense of the
word with all its senses

I receive in the mail a card
that is not inscribed that
is not imprinted that is
stitched and stamped

You send me a card in
stitches nine times told
and held in the hand to
save me time and effort

You send me the water
of words as images of
words as words of images
to slake the thirst of eyes

If I had thirty eyes I could not
drink every word off this small
fabric-covered card with a
date stitched carefully into it

If I had thirty eyes and no
desire for water I could not
find a way to make the words
of these cards into words of ink

I feel with my fingertips the
shape of these words with
my eyes closed and my fingers
over them like a blind man reading

Every card is a rectangle
yet the words might have lines
of curves or straight and rigid
words in the sense of living

I want to take a needle through
the thick root of my thumb to
sew a letter back to you I want
to draw a red or blue thread through

I want to hold the welted
raised and topographic word
in my hand as my hand as
a word of the body held upon it

I want to stitch together
the wounds of this body
to make the words this
body can hold together

All words are typographic
their environment is the page
all words are topographic
their home is the limit of ours