What is this black ink on the page and why do I love it so much, pitch of night and kneeling down in darkness, more than any window, any day dream and why do I feel the black ink filling me like a liquor that speaks so truly and why do I write like a blood letting, like a flood, like pent-up release close to orgasm, soul shudder and little groan of delight and wonder but also sorrow, a stifled sob like my fist to my mouth, weathered stone that has touched and held so much and where does the black ink come from, what country, what sea, and is it the Black Sea where I went a few times as dreamer and outcast, a foreigner reading Neruda near the beach and listening to Ezan and how does the black ink summon me, how does it turn me into a one-man church with the rosary on my breath and who-what-where-when must I thank, the wind that has no figure and this breath of spirit and why is the black ink saying me and turning me into a stylus and black felt pen and why, oh, why, oh, why do the brush strokes feel so right, so trembling and intimate, so precious we abiding before they are gone or like a mouse scurrying in the dark to evade capture and devouring and are the words likewise scurrying, small precious rodents with quivering mouths and where may I borrow a few jolts of courage and how dark can this black ink be, darker than death or a bottomless pit or is this darkness finally a place to rest and to wonder, to surrender and be free to say what must be spoken, be written, be sung into the dark to the ones I love so the love will return staining my fingers in black glory, black ink, and how the black ink marries and merges with the page in holy matrimony, these delicate brushstrokes keeping me from falling into the abyss which is silence, which is blank whiteness and Ahab’s whale, which is terror and the holiness of not knowing but lifting my head to gaze into the sky, waiting for another trickle of black ink to save me.