EXPLICATION OF THE POEM

ABSENCE

X-X-X-X


Absence is the condensed version of all that has been written so far since the beginning of writing -- the smallest common denominator. It goes far into the un-sub-pre-etc-conscious and acts as fingers behaving like pointers on the writing machine to what happened once upon a time here now again.

The dashes between the X-X-X-X are at the same time distancing the four letters from each other and joining them like imaginary hands grasping each other while being in the line heading into absence. The nakedness, the symmetry of enforced exposure suffered by the symbols mirrors the cold figure of the cross, the X, those two quick scraps of the pen on the paper of death [or rather, the fingers pointing on the keyboard of the writing machine] listing absence in abundance.

An X points to an unknown quantity, is a variable, an X is used to indicate multiplication [how much can be absented?]. Above all, an X is a sign used to name a person of unknown identity, unknown provenance or destination [the wandering Jew, the bum, Moinous]. X is form. Could it also be of importance that the human X chromosome is a sex chromosome? [A question which may remain unanswered until the end of the human X].


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