from the new issue of Verse (Volume 26, Numbers 1-3)
Ron Padgett
HOW TO
When people ask me
if I write with a computer
or by hand I pause,
for it’s a question
I do not find interesting
anymore. Forty years ago
I saw how Ted’s old typewriter
fit his bricklike writing one
word-brick at a time, and how
my lightweight portable with French
keyboard let me whiz along
as if halfway in another language.
Now I write with words
that never were mine nor will
they ever be. A demon inside
says I do not write at all.