November PAD Poem #30

Photo Attribution

So this poem marks the end of the November PAD Poetry Chapbook Challenge on the Writer's Digest website. I'll be working through December to whittle down and edit my poems to 10-20 pages in order to submit my chapbook in early January (January 5th, to be precise). The winner will be announced on Groundhog Day (February 2nd). I have not a hope of winning, but I appreciate the opportunity to wrestle with words and learn a lot about poem-ing and even more about myself during this crazy upside-down month of scribbling pages smothered in the blue ink of my beloved fountain pen.

Our Day 30 Prompt is to write a "lessons-learned" poem, and that's what I've done. I hope that you enjoy it! And I'm sure that those of you who aren't poetry fans will appreciate the lack of daily poetry on my blog...at least until April, which is National Poetry Month and the month of NaPoWriMo!

Words on Safari
My words, they stumble--
tripped by faint, fading images,
faulty and fragile rhyme,
the metrical patterns of Mother Goose.

Mixed and tumbling, they heap
together in an eroding mass,
weathered by the wind, rain, ice--
tunneling through my dessicated veins,
upending my vague sense of reality.

I cannot control these words.
I cannot shape them to my will
or carve them into sharp silhouette
or force them to submit to my vision.

All I can do is quietly live
among them in their native land,
watching them ravenously feed on their prey
while I jot weary observations
into this once-crisp journal,

hoping to learn a thing or two
in the messy, gory process.

Copyright 2010 by Susanne Barrett

There. I am officially done with the drafting stage. Now it's time for revision, editing--cutting and culling and switching and unswitching. We shall see how it goes....

Setting down my blue pen to take up the red,