July 13, 2008, 09:12 PM ET

FLASHBACK (1991): About Not Writing: A Poem

About Not Writing: A Poem

The way old ladies board the bus without correct change I sit by screen and try to write without words.

At this hour I could say anything: call a friend in a foreign country, wake her up with an American jolt

or call the information operator

in Iowa and ask what the weather is doing, now, which is earlier this evening, out there.

Speaking’s easy. My words might orbit the earth forever as sound, but really they’re as gone as smoke.

It’s only typeface that can kill you. Bad phrases, like hangovers, inspire regret

or abstinence.

The poem I liked earlier is a cheat: a fake credit card, a phony id, a hologram without a third dimension, just some shine.

I leave the keyboard, moving slowly as I will — and not so many years from now either — disembark the bus and avoid the driver’s eye because change is no longer currency

just as the keys, fiddle as I will, no longer jimmy the locks.