--Cake

Well. Today was interesting.

I just wanna go to sleep right now, so I don't know how much non-poetic content this entry will end up having, but here's the quick rundown: I was up 'round the clock Sunday night. After finishing yesterday's entry, I continued working on that poem I was talking about, with some much-appreciated help from Georgina. (Thank goodness for Australian readers.)

So, should you be wondering what I ended up doing... I basically ditched all the changes I made in the second draft (except for the title), reverted to Phebe's Remix of the first, and tinkered with the verse paragraph beginning "Well, maybe I don't have it in me." With the end result being this:

Symbols, yes.
Both the characters on the page,
and the characters in the story,
and even a white whale--
no, that's been done to death.
That's been done for death.
That's done, dun, donut,
dallying in the dark alleys of the night.

And, yes, perhaps rhymes,
at times,
but not in any regular pattern, of course;
can't have any method in the madness.
Better to have madness in the method,
or at least act like it.
No divine chime of the sublime here, buster;
if you're in that line,
take it outside.

And meter?
Sure, put a coin in the hat
and see where it'll get you.

But that's not really enough,
is it?

No, you want blood, sweat, and tears,
but not the rock group,
and not anything cliché as that.
You want the ginger halo of the sun above the brownstones on Delancy Street,
and the hint of silver in her raven hair.

You want the cobwebs in the corner,
the old, dusty cookbooks crowding the shelf,
the dim light of the florescent bulb
casting shadows through the broken wicker chair back,
and the protagonist fucking the antagonist's brains out on the linoleum floor.

Well, maybe I don't have it in me.
Maybe I need to get laid,
or high,
or buzzed,
at least once in my life,
before I'll be able to write about it.
Maybe I'm not ready,
or willing,
to confront my feelings.
Maybe I'm not visual,
and don't know what a "ginger halo" is supposed to be.
Maybe I like emotional detachment, ever think of that?

Maybe life is hard enough to deal with in REAL LIFE
without having to put it into another damn bit of verse.

Anyway,
I still don't have a poem.

What I ended up doing was scrapping all but the very last section, which I retitled, and expanded a bit. (For now, anyway. I expect to do something with the rest of the original poem down the line; just now, however, this was the most manageable solution.)

The results are here, albeit not in the most aesthetically pleasing fashion. One problem with HTML is that you can't do hanging indents, and those are crucial for representing poetry properly on the page. Suffice it to say that the page width isn't that narrow on the actual thing, but this was the best compromise I could come up with, offhand.

They say it is a miracle that, when skidding
   across four lanes of I-91, the family van
   didn't hit any other cars.
And I agree.
They say it is a miracle that, although my
   eyelid was cut clean through, my eyes
   themselves were unscratched.
And I agree.
They say it is a miracle that the damage to
   all of us wasn't much worse than it was,
   what with everybody but my mother and I--
and my grandfather, of course, but he tends
   not to be mentioned together with us
   survivors--
being up and about by the following day.
And I agree.
They say that we can find some comfort in
   the fact that my younger brother and his
   wife just had a son, whom they've named
   after my grandfather.  Ultimately, they
   say, life goes on.
And I agree.
And they say all sorts of things about silver
   linings, and Divine Providence, and the
   importance of keeping a positive outlook and
   appreciating every day one gets, and lots of
   other crap along those lines.
And I agree.

(Shmuel looks at his printout and does a double-take.)

Oh, no. I forgot to correct that again?! Oh, I don't believe this...

Right. That's what happened; I made the correction, but didn't save it, and then... oh, darn.

Oh, well. It wasn't that important, I guess. Those looking back at the previous draft will note a switch in phrasing in the first line; the version found there was actually a mistake on my part; the rhyme scheme demands that "heel" be at the end of the line, not "fetch." But, for the second time, the version I handed in has it the wrong way. Bleah.

Oh, well. Anyway, here's the latest draft, corrected appropriately:

Let dogs go beg and scrape and fetch and heel;
No owner's mark on me, I always cried.
I'm on my own. My tail's aloft. I feel
No need to get inane and misty-eyed
For others. That's a form of suicide.
Rejecting your routines for what? A girl
Who doesn't think you're overqualified
For chasing bits of string, just like a churl?
No self-respecting cat would more than hurl
A hairball at the notion, so I said.
But came a scent, enticing more than squirrel--
I leapt. I rolled. I purred. I lost my head.
    I'd always thought that I was rational.
    Alas! A hint of mint puts me in thrall.

Which I was, arriving about a half-hour into it, having missed the discussion of the first poem of this final session, but still participating for the rest of it, at least. Class ended somewhere around 4 PM, after which I went home and finally began work on my Indian History essays. Which I finished and e-mailed off right around midnight, which, the way I interpreted the instructions, was the deadline. About the best that can be said for said essays is that they're about the right length, and have something to do with the assigned topics.

This was followed later in the evening by about fifteen repeats of "Sheep Go To Heaven," by Cake, from Prolonging the Magic, which I'm currently borrowing from a friend. And, yes, I'm aware of the irony involved here, following up a jazzed-up Catholic hymn with a ode to hedonism. Especially with me being a religious Jew. What can I say? I have eclectic tastes...

Finally, for the home stretch of the last hour, I switched to my traditional standby of "Ooh Ooh Song," by Pat Benatar. Nobody beats Benatar for music to write by, at least in my experience.