I

M

T

A

K

I

N

G

A

S

H

I

T

O

H

H

Y

E

S

u

r


*

I saw this scribbled in the grouting between the tiles in the men's toilet cubicle.

It occurs to me why would anyone take such pains or think it even worth communicating such a message (a redundant one, at that, surely?). Why, too, would anyone want to reply? (A difference in hand is just discernible). And then - most intriguing - the lower case 'u' and 'r', evidence of texting mannerisms - but the (almost poetic) doubled upper case 'H'.*

Perhaps I shouldn't be so judgmental. What, after all, is Blogging? And, going further still, what lies behind the urge to write anything at all? Maybe we are all in our separate cubicles leaving messages for future occupants?**

__

* Fascinating, too, the care required to write in such a narrow space. A whisper down the crack. Rebellion and timidity conjoined.

** I don't have to hand that Ashbery poem in Houseboat Days with something along the lines of "and leaving behind us our shit and our sperm/ up creeks for the landscape to make what it would of us". (A whole new genre announces itself: poems composed out of misrememberings).