The Hexacoto

Poetry and prose these days are very good with conjuring metaphors and images and the such, and they are very expressive. But I feel that modern poetry lack a sort of creativity in their use of the language. True, the images conjured are very strong and vivid, but in the reading the poems, one mostly appreciates the effect of the images and not so much the language. I would look at my own writing and think that the content is strong but were I to look at the words used alone and how they relate to each other, they are nothing special.

I think it’s because we’re too used as writers to acutely represent and display our senses and what we think and feel — we are able to show readers what we see, what we hear, and feel, through our similes, metaphors, analogies, onomatopoeia, etc. But these uses are expected and staid, after a certain point; there is nothing surprising about using a tapping dactylic meter to represent galloping action.

What if we were not allowed to see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue, or touch with our skin? Just as a blind person sees the world differently, with his hands, surely we must be able to write about our experiences with the world through our immediate mediums?

With that, I bring to you the challenge of writing about smelling without using your nose.

I will try to write one paragraph about two topics about smelling, introducing that I am smelling something, but subsequently never using any word or phrase that is associated with the nose, or typical flavour words with which smells are associated. Let’s see if I can succeed.

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The smell of fried chicken

The very first thing whenever I cycle past the Crown Fried Chicken shop in my neighbourhood is that I always smell the fried chicken on my face first. That wafting, hovering film hangs waiting in the air, waiting to arrest anyone who passes by in hopes of tempting them in for a piece of fried chicken. But that wafting, hovering film also hangs onto my face as a perceptible cling of grease that whets my appetite, even as I salivate from the thought of the crunch of batter-on-skin, the ooze of juice that washes down the side of the tongue, and the slight but oh-so-delightful burn from the steam that escapes the meat as teeth sink into yielding flesh. In but three seconds I would have already cycled past the shop, but I have left my stomach behind on the side walk, peering longingly through the filthy windows, wanting to be filled up with fried chicken and fries.

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The smell of rain

I find the smell of rain after it has rained unpleasant — that scrubbing it does to the inside of my nose as it evaporates off of the side walk, that tugging feeling as it roils off of your arms and face. Had I wanted to smell mould, I’d have gone to the basement and stuck the green patches festering slowing up my nose, not to be assaulted by liquid decomposition and acidity that hangs around after the event like an unwelcome customer. Nobody ever smells the rain too much as it is happening, for they are too preoccupied by the sounds, the spectacle — the most people get is a sense of wetness in the air. But after-rain rain reminds you that it had been here, and sticks its proverbial armpit in your face, in my face, in its humidity and the awful contractions it leaves on my tongue.