50 Mistakes: Draft: BRAILLE IN THE TIME OF MIRACLES
This is an entry in my 50mistakes LJ from a couple of years ago but that has meaning now for someone else, so I'm posting it here for general consumption. It's a look into my editing and draft process, neither of which were 100% applied by the time this entry was done.
Of course, I've since done a couple of edits of this.
== == == == == == ==
Last night during the First Draft Open Mic ("Only new or unread poems!") I was compelled to pull out a piece of poem I'd written down in a notebook, but hadn't done anything with. It's based on a prompt I've tried to get at least one poem to write in the past, to no avail.
I had the first two lines, but nothing else. Last night, I got the rest and shared it on the mic...
This is the poem as I read it last night:
===================================
BRAILLE IN THE TIME OF MIRACLES
I can’t read lips,
so I played blind with my eyes closed,
my mouth open,
and searched her body for its Braille.
I was heavy-handed any other time,
but not that night.
Then, I could leave no footprint.
Whenever I entered a room,
she turned to me.
Blind,
she saw me in the darkness like the last firefly of spring.
Deaf,
she noted every whisper I carrier pigeon-ed on whiskey kisses to her.
Mute,
all of her poems shouted across a gulf of dark mother
and wooden canes to me.
Her mother took her from me
when she found the letters.
I poke holes in barroom napkins,
mute and eyeless letters I slip into the north river,
the one that passes her cottage
three times a year:
once on her birthday,
again on the first full moon of the year,
and again on the anniversary of the day
I ran to her, and found
an empty cottage whose walls
ran full of “yes”.
============================================
Not bad! Not great yet, but not wholly bad. There is a good poem to be dug out of what's here. This is more like a skeleton with some meat on its bones, but it needs more muscle and skin.
This is the sheet I performed from, essentially what you see above, but in its natural state...like looking in Dorian Gray's mirror:
Again, this was built off of the first two lines (themselves edited while I waited last night):
And here, you can see I've already done a second draft to resolve some of its issues:
What issues? How about that Slam "So" in the second line? What's a "Slam 'So'"? Well, it goes like this:
I blah blah blah blah blah, so I blah blah blah blah blah.
Like:
I was a broken child, so I became a lantern that shot green dinosaur bones from its mouth instead.
(Yes, they're usually attempts at surrealism striving for deep meaning that basically turn out to just be random images tossed in a salad bowl.)
(Yes, they usually start with "I".)
(Yes, they usually start pointing out something the poet/narrator can't/didn't do, but then transforms into something that, while it can't fulfill the act either, is no longer the person responsible for the inability/inaction. Don't blame me, it suggests, I'm a buitterfly, so it's no longer my problem.)
Or the Superman version of the same with a slight ramp-up:
I wasn't an epileptic kid with inconvenient seizures...I was THE epileptic kid with inconvenient seizures!
Groan.
Back to this poem, how about the awkward rhythm of that first line? "Can't"? Ugh.
I opted to do a first swipe at fixing this by making the tense match the rest of the poem and we'll go from there. If I wasn't in a rush to have it ready by the time I might be called up to the mic, I might have fixed this sooner.
Then there's the "spacers", as I call them; the stuff that's there until I come up with a stronger, less cliche word or phrase. That's what the highlighted areas are: things to revisit and make better. The "last firefly of spring?" *snore*
You get the idea. Good idea, yes. Decent start, sure. Good poem? Not yet.
Of course, I've since done a couple of edits of this.
== == == == == == ==
Last night during the First Draft Open Mic ("Only new or unread poems!") I was compelled to pull out a piece of poem I'd written down in a notebook, but hadn't done anything with. It's based on a prompt I've tried to get at least one poem to write in the past, to no avail.
I had the first two lines, but nothing else. Last night, I got the rest and shared it on the mic...
This is the poem as I read it last night:
===================================
BRAILLE IN THE TIME OF MIRACLES
I can’t read lips,
so I played blind with my eyes closed,
my mouth open,
and searched her body for its Braille.
I was heavy-handed any other time,
but not that night.
Then, I could leave no footprint.
Whenever I entered a room,
she turned to me.
Blind,
she saw me in the darkness like the last firefly of spring.
Deaf,
she noted every whisper I carrier pigeon-ed on whiskey kisses to her.
Mute,
all of her poems shouted across a gulf of dark mother
and wooden canes to me.
Her mother took her from me
when she found the letters.
I poke holes in barroom napkins,
mute and eyeless letters I slip into the north river,
the one that passes her cottage
three times a year:
once on her birthday,
again on the first full moon of the year,
and again on the anniversary of the day
I ran to her, and found
an empty cottage whose walls
ran full of “yes”.
============================================
Not bad! Not great yet, but not wholly bad. There is a good poem to be dug out of what's here. This is more like a skeleton with some meat on its bones, but it needs more muscle and skin.
This is the sheet I performed from, essentially what you see above, but in its natural state...like looking in Dorian Gray's mirror:
Again, this was built off of the first two lines (themselves edited while I waited last night):
And here, you can see I've already done a second draft to resolve some of its issues:
What issues? How about that Slam "So" in the second line? What's a "Slam 'So'"? Well, it goes like this:
I blah blah blah blah blah, so I blah blah blah blah blah.
Like:
I was a broken child, so I became a lantern that shot green dinosaur bones from its mouth instead.
(Yes, they're usually attempts at surrealism striving for deep meaning that basically turn out to just be random images tossed in a salad bowl.)
(Yes, they usually start with "I".)
(Yes, they usually start pointing out something the poet/narrator can't/didn't do, but then transforms into something that, while it can't fulfill the act either, is no longer the person responsible for the inability/inaction. Don't blame me, it suggests, I'm a buitterfly, so it's no longer my problem.)
Or the Superman version of the same with a slight ramp-up:
I wasn't an epileptic kid with inconvenient seizures...I was THE epileptic kid with inconvenient seizures!
Groan.
Back to this poem, how about the awkward rhythm of that first line? "Can't"? Ugh.
I opted to do a first swipe at fixing this by making the tense match the rest of the poem and we'll go from there. If I wasn't in a rush to have it ready by the time I might be called up to the mic, I might have fixed this sooner.
Then there's the "spacers", as I call them; the stuff that's there until I come up with a stronger, less cliche word or phrase. That's what the highlighted areas are: things to revisit and make better. The "last firefly of spring?" *snore*
You get the idea. Good idea, yes. Decent start, sure. Good poem? Not yet.