The high desert of words and rhymes and couplets still seems arid and woodsy.

What does one do but get lost there?  I’ve marked the trees with words hoping to read my way out of the wilderness.

Soul… speak… grainy… What do all these things say and how will I remember which words to read out when I don’t remember which ones led me in?  Already there are so many of them and it seems I’ve forgotten which came when.

To dazzle with words is a strange gift fit for sorcerers and cheats but I no longer find magic appealing nor do I believe in the next good thing.

In fact, as I desperately search reading for hope and from desperation, I see this whole world, this whole cosmos, dug into a tree… I.

It makes me shudder and I feel faint in the head and sick in my belly, like I just swallowed an axe.  That same word again and again… I. 

I’d like to find a tree with nothing on it and carve out a new word but all the trees are taken and already night begins to fall.