A friend is in my head with a made-up voice that scratches against my ear. I hear Charles Bukowski as I read his poems. He wrote: as the poems go into the thousands you realize that you've created very little.

Sand across glass, grinding, his voice is inside.

Again I remember speaking on the phone and laughing when someone asked how I get all the words people say. How do I write it so fast? And articles … isn't writing difficult? I say, mostly, it's a lot of erasing. The lines, dashes, and whorls of letters and smudged ink that remain mean enough to type out and print, I suppose. It's an article. Its ink dries and fades in the sun and the meaning is gone for the reader before the last word.

A coworker was trying to compile a brief summary of our staff at the newspaper. Didn't I help with the video and website content? J. asked. Yup. Ok, he said, what else?

Honestly, I just shoot stuff and repeat stuff, I told him. With a camera and a pen and no narrator's voice or poetic meaning to my arrival or my photos and story, I just look at the words again, wondering how I might make them a little better.

Better to me means less explanation. Draw me a picture of meaning sliced and rare, please.