David Gairdner – Knife

David Gairdner
Oct 31
2 min read

• That's not a knife, this is a knife.

• Was it one of the Modernists who painted a picture of a

• knife and said this is a knife?

• Then another guy painted the same picture and said this is not a knife. Writing is like art, it is a deception. I am holding a knife in my hand right now. I am bleeding. Blood is falling from the sleeve of skin above my wrist. Did this happen? Maybe it did. If it did, the image you see in your mind is not quite like the actual incident. Could I draw a picture of a bleeding hand? Would the character understand my pain. I know a good song I sing from time to time.

It is called Mary Goes Around the Roses.

Stymied by plague conditions people would write nursery rhymes about sneezing. A child could play that game. A man uncomfortable with children's games couldn't. I nurse my childhood self. I rock the cradle. Flawless connection with people borne, air borne, collapsing into the heavy thud of weightlessness. I cry out in anger. I cry out in joy. I cry. I. cry. Crying is therapy.

Turn your neck towards me, say Thank you.

Turn away then away pray for a way out of this melancholia.

I am the man who is denied.

I am the man who cuts the knife. I am the man who smokes the pipe.

I am the man on the screen. Don't mistake my truth for yours. I am real as much as this ink on paper.