Poetic Justice, #ROW80

February 12, 2015

ROW80

As a public speaker or teacher I specialize in improvisation.  I like to joke on my feet and consider myself to be a bit of a wit.  Now as I attempt to transfer my in person energy into the written word, I notice the same tendency.  I want to wing it, then do it again if that did not work well.  My urge to edit and refine has been absent from this process.  I told you I want to be like all of these highly productive and impressive writers in  #ROW80 by adding more editing and revision to each piece of poetry I write.  I still am not attracted to the revision part of the deal, but am at least thinking more about structure up front.

I have a curiosity about trying to match a piece of poetry with a prose short story about a character (or characters) in my family tree.  I am thinking hard about my Confederate family history as it relates to the Civil Rights movement, and our political situation today.  I grew up in Pennsylvania but my cousins in Texas were taught to racially discriminate at the same time they were given strict religious rules.  I didn’t know how lucky I was to escape early racist brainwashing until I moved to Texas as a 15-year-old.  I was never confused by religious bigotry because it was not presented to me, but my classmates seemed very afflicted with some ancient hatred issues I just did not understand.  I moved to the Brazos Valley, a place where cotton had been king and the population had once been around 90% enslaved Africans.  I now know that this place was close to the homestead my ancestors settled after the Civil War.  I am dreaming and obsessing about this time and what happened to my family, so I might as well use this to attempt my first twin set of prose/poetry.  I will also use this occasion to debut a first draft!!!!  I am doing this in an attempt to follow it with both a prose story and more refined and interesting drafts of this work in progress.  Mind you, this is the first time I am using this phrase (WIP) because I never allowed much progress before moving on to another piece.  I have no working title..unless it is maybe “Civil”:

DNA a wheel

The pendulum of social equality swings back and forth without fail

Generations carry the scars of hatred inherited without question

Blindly absorbing the sins of the past, each individual has been primed

To live in a time of upheaval and grief, suspecting it has been created by others

Dark secretive layers of cultural denial manage to influence consciousness

Seeping up from beneath the floor supporting our structure is a sticky tar

It reeks of rancid promotions and snake oil promises recorded in history

If we only knew the source of this gunk, this oozing mendacity of pride,

We might confront it and uncover the essence of the buried truth inside

If you, gentle readers, have any revisions you want to send my way, please feel free.  You are probably much better at that than I am.  Not to worry about my pride as a poet…I can honestly say I have none..because you need some progress  to make you proud, and this is my first jaunt into this territory.  I plan to start the prose story in the next week, but do not expect that to be published before much ado. Thanks for all the insight into what writers really do.  It is extremely helpful.