Trying to Write Better.

I recently had a session of poetry editing with a close friend and realized there are two basic principles to writing:

1. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY?

and

2. Don't let your subject off the hook.

After two hours of Shannon crossing out whole phrases and sections, repeating over and over again "Do you really need this?" or "Is this really necessary?"and rolling my eyes in response, I realized the purpose of poetry is it's simplicity in describing a moment. It often needs less adjectives than you think and requires the writer to hone in on the most precise of moments and feelings.

So after returning home I sat down at my computer and attempted to cut down and clean out my words. This is what I produced:

Big blue eyes

straining to see the road

over a bear and a bunny.

Locked into my car seat

I was your sidekick

and you my hero

determined to save me

from a world

that frightened you.

Playing make believe

in homemade forts

of sheets and clothespins

my white knight

slayed imaginary dragons

while cookies baked in the oven.

Forever loved, daddy

it is here we must say auf weidersehen

at the dirt road that leads to

Citgo signs and subway rails

We have been guided here

by nights when I told you

to leave the door open

and the hall light on.

Please don’t turn it off daddy,

because I will always need it to guide me home.  

Sylvia Edit.

I.

Holding aspirations close

stitching tragedies into fabric flesh,

Blue-eyed babes stroke blank faces of loveless men

and run against the wind that breathes coincidence.

I have known and loved you for the ink you apply to page

But your contemplations consumed you

eaten alive by your own beast

 a creation of your broken and brilliant mind,

you paused only once

for petite faces in the car window.

II.

This is how we alter one another.

You, an ill-fated child

pining over the corpse of daddy ,

and vowing to return through a hole under the floorboards,

were consumed by her own madness.

I flashed blue eyes at unassuming boys, denying my age,

a freckled face desperate to be valued.

Catastrophic creatures lead double lives of normalcy and senselessness,

it is bound to overwhelm as it beckons us

 to the sweet fumes of domestic poison

yelling last call above the crowd in our heads,

pulling at our minds for a profit.

III.

But, this is where I leave you,

overlooking all your desires and delusions.

I let go of your hand

and cover the path that led me here

 so as to not tempt  my own fragility.

I am. I am. I am.

"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."

-The quotation on Sylvia Plath's headstone chosen by Ted Hughes

Reckless Boy

You’re a lost hope boy, a picturesque car wreck in neutral greys

smoking Marlboro reds and cursing at the stars, their twinkle too bright

for your hung over eyes.

You walk with the burden of a criminal, hiding the pistol inside a ragged coat pocket, always concealing the evidence behind a childish grin.  

Yet feet will never run fast enough, and the chain on your bike will always

be broken, and someday you will trip on a crack in the pavement and come face to face with a frightened and lonely little boy begging for attention.

The riddles of youth will shatter leaving a pernicious delinquent

discontent with the beaten and broken face reflected in every mirror,

for you are a ferocious extravagance, a subtle threat to the balance of complacency,

But perhaps you have come too far boy and it is time to go home.

This world is not for tenuous souls like you, reckless days

have passed and a dark figure waits ahead, holding the hands of fate.

For Sylvia: Mirrored Alteration

Holding our aspirations close and

stitching our tragedies into the fabric flesh of soul.

Blue-eyed babes stroke blank faces of loveless men

and run against the wind that breathes our names into the soil of coincidence.

I have known and loved you for the ink you apply to page

in my name, recording thoughts of a girl from a different time.

But your contemplations consumed you in a fiery mass of calamity,

eaten alive by your own beast, a creation of your broken and brilliant mind,

pausing only for a moment to consider the petite faces staring from the car window.

Perhaps this is how we have been altered from one another.

You, an ill-fated child of nine pining over the corpse of daddy

and vowing to return through a hole under the floorboards,

was consumed by her own madness.

I, a subtle extravagance flashed blue eyes at unassuming boys in denial of my age,

a freckled face desperate to be valued at the highest price.

We catastrophic creatures lead double lives of normalcy and senselessness,

when will the cease-fire be called above thick black smoke of souls at war?

Because it is bound to overwhelm, beckoning us to the sweet fumes

of domestic poison, yelling last call above the roaring crowd inside our heads

that pulls at our minds for a cut of the profit.

But perhaps dear, this is where I leave you. At the precipice of the end,

overlooking a black gorge of all your desires and delusions.

I must let go of your hand and cover the path that led us here so as

not to tempt fragility embedded within the creases in my brain.

Goodbye my lovely

you have fallen behind, the ropes of insanity

wrapping themselves tight around your sweet ankles.

A ghostly martyr whose words thump with the life of blood through veins

and whose deftly maneuvered fingers grasp at jaded minds to vicariously

live through that which you could never stand to bear.