As I compiled my next anthology, tons of old poems that I thought I would dismiss, I remembered having read something that I also dismissed in the past: ‘What makes a poem dismissible to you?’ I’ve been dismissing many things lately.
Finishing a poem that you love too much is the greatest love your life found and lost. It is the first bite of chocolate and the last. A rosebud’s rise and its fall in the grimmest winter. And I can’t stand watching my creation lose importance. So, I leave it there, on the desk, collecting dust and becoming unappealing to the eyes. Until I have to organise that desk and select paper to recycle, I read those poems over, and they seem so old and unrelatable that I… I dismiss them. I don’t recognise them anymore. And the poems that make it through the creative gatekeeper are the ones I didn’t even care for.
But old love letters are never thrown away, the taste of the best chocolate is never forgotten, and the memory of a rosebud lasts through any winter. So, I dismiss those poems, but I always keep them in an envelope, on top of which I wrote Old Silver — Look if ever in need of inspiration.
Months ago I found the guts to read those poems again, to see if I could find a new meaning. I did indeed. Those states of mind seemed to be left to right and right to left the same. I didn’t understand, but perhaps someone somewhere sometime will. But I wrote down the last words of some poems and they made this:
I State of squared madness Your dead lines killed the layer Autumn Word my ambrosia With blue petals II My mind wind goes Touches the sound Singing on essence In the other — extracted Purples III Right after the artist’s conception Fragmented Moment Collective By itself Here Lose Enough to maxim That storm Written in time for years IV Here lie the eyes that don’t care Immersed in being what Once were embraced By the shattered Butterfly V Existence Larger Exists Sounding Ceasing Nightmare on that vision Would have wasted time To be together VI Escape Backstage Nouns denial Open Draw The concept speculation VII The spark unaware of the sun Turn on its darkness park It can’t win
Lastly, I wrote this last stanza, an Epilogue maybe. I added the full poem to The Genesis of Language that will make it to tangibility one day:
It’s fascinating how well the words can land on an open-concept Language is the only reason why we’re here Round letters need to flow up to fit the vertical weight of the world
I wasn’t even in need of inspiration. I was just bored. But I found brilliance on that envelope where only Old Silver was supposed to be. Which is, by the way, the name of my next anthology and of the long long poem I wrote about that envelope. It goes like this:
An envelope full of old letters with a message: 'Look through when in need of old new concepts' I do it particularly well I am very good at rewriting myself through the other’s perspective Or is it the opposite somewhere in this sentence? I don’t know Sometimes I rush in the reasoning It goes sideways I don’t even understand The outcome But it talks to and through itself And I’m no more than a channel Or railroad tracks A waterless canyon With only the stoic air And memories from ages where The concept was all that would ever matter I’m constantly in a rush, Just now I started to write this through a silver nib But old silver is for quiescence, the script wanted to ease And I ended up relying on the daisy That will always turn around as fast as The thought I’ve already forgotten By this point Last autumn It was the same I spent the incarnadining months in between The ethereal and the physical Not entering any door Just observing from a third perspective Or perhaps it’s the opposite somewhere in the wind Where I deceive Alliterating the same old silver through the blue In hopes that— And overusing caesuras and ellipsis Expecting that the concept would convey itself In this age of literalness The collective that easily coalesces And there’s no mystery left On the rune to be read Or sign in my café... Wide openness And I just want to ebb the gap I want the light to go black So all we can do is word our way back To enlightenment It always happens somewhere around my birthday I was born mid-autumn The day I decided to give existence a try But I’ve never left non-existence behind The reason why I could never enter that door I remained in between The ethers and physicality But the autumn ends The door where the blue sphere deceivers Float in light Closes again I’m once again left to the epilogue Where the colours of tomorrow start to glow But, for some reason yet unknown to me I close the book and contemplate the open-concept And the other seasons follow the warm monochrome In a translucent, crystal bowl with orris roots powder in between the lines Where they dry but never fade I wish I had achieved supremacy over my thoughts So I could make more sense So I could finish a sentence Or a poem Without changing my heart as the seasons change Or revolve the concept as the stanzas go But I am just a lost blue sphere that turned into rust aeons ago I was forgotten by time, I nearly lost my mind Alliterating the same old silver Rewriting the unwritten, old silver nib, Blue ink, third perspectives, opposites Hoping that it would become Gold
The lesson here is as cheesy as the hyperbolic comparisons in the second paragraph: Dismiss as many poems as you wish, but never give up on them. Last thoughts are never final. Some last lines refuse to end. They might become your best allies when you feel uninspired, alone, or even bored.
Love,
A
A good topic, thanks for posting.
One of my writing techniques has been to write past what I thought was the given last line. This strain on the topic usually results in more surprising imagery or word play that I never expected. But I'm less expansive a poet than you: usually that's when I resolve to reduce the poem again, discarding lines written before the last line for lines written after.