it’s amazing how retyping has altered the following poem. I completely altered a verse and found two copy errors that would have otherwise gone unnoticed had I cut and copied. Having the errors would have been embarrassing enough but some of the original was deeply flawed as well. It is a better work now I think and you will have nothing to compare it to.
This is generally how my poetry progresses from first draft to final, however, once final I try to not go back, so to say, but now that I am retyping older finished works for this journal I am having to. It is making me a better poet – or maybe not but the drugs and delusions aren’t either – or are they?
relative day (a poem of no consequence)
daises
lilacs
hyacinth
wild grown purple orchids
and aphids
concrete
wrought iron benches
400lb ashtrays
pebble garbage cans
bleeder hose irrigation
garden
open sky
thirty Mexican laborers
two white foremen
ants cavalcade
on abandoned pastries
old men on benches
cooing pigeons
young sleeping dogs
trees already blooming
white
brick paved walkway
impeccable
standing
one dozen half open benches
caramel tinted soda in bottles
sun’s up
fifty-three degrees
daises
lilacs
hyacinth
wild grown purple orchids
and aphids
relative day
– I wrote this.
as another example of a poem that has altered a lot from the simple act of retyping it somewhere and having to rework the wording to express my intention is a poem I first put on facebook only to have my errors pointed out, painful to my heart but necessary, and then being told a word was unnecessary. Of course I argued and foolishly did not listen but privately I altered the poem as suggested and found she was right, thank you Heather. What really buggered me about this one is that I had tried this poem written exactly as it is here before deciding on a different version which took away the essence for a mnemonic device that didn’t work anyway. here is that poem in it’s final form…
without intention
your beauty reminds me
I am living.
your touch reminds me
I must breathe.
your sighs take
my body to sleep,
your very being resting
heart’s beat to steady.
aroused by your silence, we
let love awaken with
morning breath.
we, like children, laugh
under covers in darkness
pretending we are alone,
untouchable, cradling
the others infinite fragility.
I arise to know you.
I arise to know these depths
with atonement;
depths without failure,
I arise to know.
your beauty reminds me
I am living.
your touch reminds me
I must breathe.
your sighs take
my body to sleep,
your very being resting
heart’s beat to steady.
– I wrote this
the platitudes of willful resemblance 