Trimming the Fat

Last night was particularly interesting for me, breaking a short bout of writer’s block by coming up with a dozen new pieces. Tehcnically, I suppose that two of my pieces are really one, since the shorter one is just lines from the original longer piece. What happened is that I wrote the original piece, then for whatever reason realized that if I put every third line together, I had another poem, carrying the same message as the original piece, but in a much more eloquent way. I’m sure I’m not the first person to ever do this, and I’m sure that it’s been done deliberately by other poets, but I was pretty amused by the fact that it happened. I’m still not sure that it wasn’t really a product of just a late night fit of madness…

Anyway, here are the poems, both titled ‘Adrift.’

The original, ‘director’s cut’:

Adrift

and alone

on glassy black sea,

floating,

suspended,

captive and free

beneath

the radiant

arc of the sky,

mirrored

perfection

upon which I lie.

 

Silence

that deafens

and echoes within,

thunders

the abyss,

the sound of my sins;

nothing

unending

summons reflection,

tranquil

the moment,

promised redemption.

 

Substance

forgotten

begging for life,

a chance

at being,

to bathe in the night.

Futile

the struggle,

defiance of being,

resist

and refuse

the torture of seeing.

 

Blinding,

this darkness,

the stars are aflame,

burning,

eternal,

I know each by its name;

perfect,

undying,

each treasured gift,

guiding

the dreams of

a wanderer adrift.

 

And the ‘edited for tv’ version:

on glassy black sea

captive and free

arc of the sky

upon which I lie

and echoes within

the sound of my sins

summons reflection

promised redemption

begging for life

to bathe in the night

defiance of being

the torture of seeing

the stars are aflame

I know each by its name

each treasured gift

a wanderer adrift