Bones of the Trade: An Argument for Pan-Human Poetics

All people are poets. Only some of us know this, but it’s true. Each person has these secret bones in them. This is pan-human. You need to know about these bones, though, to look for them, or you won’t know they’re there.

Text Bones are pulsing white aching things. When words come out of that special place that feels like something from the outside is coming in first, they lodge inside your Text Bones, which are everywhere. After a few moments, they can leave and show up on blank pages in the form of new meaning, like right now. The Bible and The Koran were all forged in the text bones of people they called prophets at one time. So were Dostoevsky’s novels, Whitman’s poems, and, I’m going to guess, all of Eudora Welty‘s fictions.

Bone Texts are made out of glowing shadow ink and arrive on the page in a way that seems like they are quotes from someone else. You feel weird when this happens. Bone texts get pulled from memories, lodged deep in other people’s bones, still dripping another’s black blood. Over time, bone texts dry and become your own. I figured bone texts out doing a college poetry assignment. I wrote this line in a sonnet that I swore had come from someone else. I barely passed the course because I spent the rest of the semester looking for that line. Everything I’ve ever read by Edgar Allan Poe came at me as bone texts.

You have access to your own special Text Bones. I think there’s now an app for Bone Texts connected to Google.

Trust me on this. You are not a god, but you’re awful damned close when you pay attention to the words inside you. Write. Read. Find your special bones. Repeat. Live.