Weekly Poetry Assignment 6: Feeling the Flow
November 20, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
Tonight was my most productive night so far. I wrote over 5000 new words for my NaNoWriMo novel, and it really flowed well. I almost hated to stop. When you are on a roll, whether you are writing poetry or fiction, you need to embrace it. There are times when the words come so fast that your hands seem barely able to keep up with your thoughts, and that was me tonight.
It makes me wish I was a better typist. When I’m writing off the top of my head I can type about sixty words a minute, but when I do so I make quite a few errors that I eventually need to correct. I’ll take that small problem in exchange for the flowing thoughts any day of the week. I have ten days to go on the project, and I have finally crossed the halfway point in my work count. I now have 26,000 words written—only 24,000 more words to go. Let’s hope I can get the flow back after work tomorrow. As it is, I need to get some sleep. I promised a poetry assignment though, so here it goes:
This Week’s Assignment
Write the first draft of your poem as quickly as you possibly can. Try to write 200 or more words in less than five minutes. After you finish the first draft, you can go back and edit it or change it as much as you want for as long as you want. Just make sure that you write the first draft quickly and without worrying too much about what the end product will be. Embrace the flow.
Congratulations, John! Great going, specially when you’ve been sick and all.
I learned to type with two fingers when I was nine. My Grandpa left me his typewriter in his will because I was clearly going to be the writer in the family, indeed already was. A couple of times as an adult I attempted to learn touch typing, but became too impatient – it was so slow compared with my entrenched bad habits. I once could do 90 words a minute with my two fingers. I suspect it’s a lot slower now; and I have exactly the same problems as you with all the errors when I’m on a roll.
But hey – we’re less likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome!
33,544 — not much else to say, I’m just plugging away. Kind of like training a young horse to change leads.
I think you’re an absolute trooper.
They both are!
Starting to feel a bit lonely here… Aren’t there any other poets out there not doing NaNo?
DREAM
You came to the temple in full regalia.
I couldn’t see your face but I knew it was you
behind the bones and the hide mask.
You wore an insignia I recognised,
and no-one else has your eyes and aura.
A smouldering fire heated the night,
casting high shadows up polished walls.
Your familiar was with you: silent, attentive.
The circle gathered, barely glimpsed
forms of light around the great meeting table.
Together once more. And again
we raised power in the old ways of magick.
Now we wait for this working to manifest
through long and mundane days and weeks.
In sleep I am warmed, hearing echoes of chanting.
© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2007
Sorry Rosemary. I will try to get the poetry kicked into a higher gear for December. Current figure, 31,000.
‘Tain’t YOUR fault! You’re doing all you can and more.
You just focus now on your final week of NaNo, OK? Excelsior and all that!
And lots of cheers and barracking for all others doing it too.
This is my ‘feeling the flow’ attempt, and my first attempt at a War poem. The parts in brackets are supposed to be the soldier’s thoughts; they should be in italics, but I couldn’t type in italics on here.
In the Trenches
By Jenny McBride, age 13
Less than half the summers,
Than he would like to have seen,
And that his brother will see,
And the other lads
That never fell for the lies
Will still see.
But the choice was not his,
Not really, but
The choice already made for him,
By the patriotic and the influential,
Who make it seem so glorious, so opportune,
To die
To die for your country, your turf, your home…
And the lies and letters
And stories
Made him dream,
Made it sound like he was someone,
(When really I am no one),
Just another nobody,
Who has seen too few summers –
And is wasting away now
In the last winter
That he will ever see.
And the posters that called for him,
That seemed to need him…
The outstretched finger,
Pointing,
But really beckoning him to death,
Showed none of the horrors
That the battlefield would wield for the weak,
And the strongest that find
They have lost the strength to fight,
When it is no longer clear
What is to be gained.
And the cruel, cruel wind
Like the sharpened knife
That kills
Without spilling blood,
Nor staining edge,
Fights for neither side,
Yet against both.
And the earth that is blemished
With the blood of the misled, trusting soldiers
Is not the roof of Hell;
How can she be?
When Hell stands so mighty and cruel upon her
(No-Man’s-Land, they call it),
Where no living soul belongs,
Only the sickening sight of the lonely corpses
Of the men that never deserved to die,
Out here
In Hell.
And the merciless wind whips at your hair
(Me mam were always tellin’ me to cut it…)
All these little, precious memories
Come flooding back
And draw the tears from your eyes,
And make you cry out
For Mam, for Pa,
For the past,
Or…
For Death…
And all around you, the putrid, rotting stench
Of death, and bloody corpses that lie
Abandoned
In poppy fields with the dirt and the mud,
With the rainfall of heaven’s tears
Upon their forms,
These structures of death,
To rinse away the sins.
And the blood, dried
Clinging to their frames
Like a grotesque blanket
For their deathbed,
And though a place in heaven was promised
Would the gates swing forth, really?
Because you begin to doubt
Even the Lord Himself
When it appears that He has left your side.
And the crude holes,
Dug like wounds in the soil
Are your only shelter
From the death above,
And the germs that feed off the blood in the cut
Would be they, the soldiers, who forgot for what they fought;
The parasites that cling to one another,
Though they have let go of hope,
In the darkness,
Lying in the Earth’s wounds.
Trenches,
They are named.
And the dust and dirt littering them,
Unavoidable, inescapable,
So why does it matter to those about to die
That their forms are plastered
With the blood of the Earth?
But trivial worries only
Can filter through their closed, numb minds,
That the angels of heaven
Would think them too dirty to enter paradise,
But turn them back,
To the pits of hell,
Or to life,
Which differs not
From Satan’s hall.
And the stone cold fear, the terror
Of the charge,
Across the vulnerable plains,
Of No-Man’s-Land…
Running to doom.
(Why? Why?)
Why follow a trail littered with the bodies of the dead?
Who had once laughed
And smiled
And spoken,
And dreamed…
And would he, too,
Tortured by the thought alone,
One day lie alone out there?
Never wept over,
(Because tears shame a soldier…)
Lying forever in the frail, precious sun that his soul barely saw…
A sickening thought: scattered limbs, broken body,
Heart still,
Tongue unmoving,
Silent forever more…
Sooner than fate meant him to be.
And the days until then, wasted,
Spent slumped,
In dark trenches,
Spine bent to the familiar shape of the clay wall,
(But not broken, never broken…)
And head bent on bruised knees,
Touching the raw, scabbed skin,
Crusted by dirt,
Hair trembling slightly,
In the icy wind that pierces the trench,
And stabs the skin,
That is by now used to pain.
And those dreams of glory,
Of winning,
Fade away in the darkness along with the life.
And memories are buried,
Because it hurts to remember…
It’s easier to forget,
Who you are,
Why you are here.
And the summers that have passed,
(For you, too few),
Die with the wintry sun, die with hope,
And the fear grows,
Until its shadow blots the dreams…
If only
You had never stepped out of your door that morning
Had never seen the tempting propaganda
That has hurled you into hell.
Because a poster
Stuck weakly to the train station wall
‘We need you, we need you’…
Bore all this
Because we are weak,
We want glory
We want to be recognised
As doing our bit.
Thank God the poster blew off in the wind
So maybe one more life can be saved from this suffering.
Sorry, it’s quite long! I don’t really like the beginning – I prefer the middle, which is when I was really getting into the ‘flow’.
Please can you tell me what you think, and give me some advice?
I think your poem speaks for itself Jenny just as it is, heart felt, and certainly puts a spin on some of the marketing of war that we often overlook. Thank you for your stand. what if we just tore them all down, the posters that is. that’s what I do, and I also speak to the management where they are recruiting. I don’t like high school students being asked to make life decisions before they even graduate. And then I think about the women and I wonder, how do we take a stand, the oppressors will die before they give up their power. That’s just how it is. I think John H. said it so well earlier in this series, — peace is impossible . . . and when we really look at the situation, it does seem so. May the gods bestow wisdom and understanding, patience and tolerance, love and forgiveness on all who engage in the communication of war.
Jenny McBride:
WOW, I felt so much… Reading that really made me think of the soldiers in Iraq, it made me scared and nervous but filled with hope of survival. It made me feel the pain that not only do they feel but what family feels when there loved one’s are over at war. I’m not sure if that’s what you where trying to portray though. You’ve got so much there that focusing on one thing is hard to do. I love it though and I feel that that is what brings your poem together. Excelent, but I would love it if you could tell me what it is the message your where trying to get out.
Rianon – I was writing about the soldiers who fought in the trenches in World War I (I’m British and we recently had Remembrance Day to remember and pay tribute to these brave soldiers). The poem is about a young man in the Trenches in the war, in about 1914 – 1918, regretting his decision to fight; the posters and the propeganda had made it seem ’so gorious, so opportune’, but now he knows the reality. War is war… fighting, pain, suffering… and that is what I was trying to portray through this poem. Fighting would never be needed if both sides truly wanted peace. But I fear that that is something we may never achieve.
Jenny:
I love it, and thank you, I truly understand it fully now. Thank you so much, Oh I didn’t know that you where British. I respect 100% this poem, and I do understand. Alot of soldiers don’t truly understand what it is like, (not all) but alot and they go there not knowing what to expect, then once they get there they finally understand.
If it is ok with you I would love to share this poem with my grandpa, he was in world war1 and I know that he would enjoy this poem. Again thank you for sharing this wonderful poem.