edit, edit, edit

The best literary advice ever given to me was this:

'Don't publish'

Once it's printed, that's it. The words are your dumb ambassadors fled to be read and misread. I used to think I was pretty nifty at poetry, and so sent in an incomprehensible mishmash to the school magazine. The reaction: 'It was... good. What does it mean?' There's a good story by Kipling (who I've been spending an amount of time with lately) which has a tired old writer advising a boisterous amateur. The boy churns out reams of doggerel, 'seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause'

Looking over what I wrote is excruciatingly cringeworthy, begging the question: will this blog cause me pain down the line? I've pretty much stopped writing poetry, but I have been editing. So with reservations here is an experiment in sonneteering written around five years ago; maybe six. And with it, the year-old rehash. Perhaps it will be interesting to see what's changed, including me.

Please excuse the anachronisms, bizarre word orders, herniating metre and the word 'methinks'.

p.s. this spellchecker doesn't recognize the word 'metre'. The world's broken.

***

I would that I still could begin to write,
without the stress to stress or beat in time,
why should I wrap my words in corset tight
or sacrifice my meaning to a rhyme?
I would reveal my mistress fair and true,
enveiled in myst’ry thick yet clear to see
for those who know us, for those lucky few
I need not hint nor with lewd phrase demean me.
Methinks my quest to write is yet in vain,
without any skill’d verse I, truth to tell,
do stumble, ungainly, mending again and again
trapped within a dull and senseless cell.
yet for all my groping for image and sound
she defies the best to write her down.

***

To put wrong right these words I'll write,
without the stress of stress or beaten time.
Why should I pull this age-old corset tight
or sacrifice my meaning to a rhyme?
I'll reveal my sweetheart fair and true,
behind a veil of words but clearly seen
by those who knew us, those patient few
who've met us both, and the veils between.
This form is her loss as her life was my gain,
this love too old to be roped to a page
to stumble, ungainly, again and again,
ripped clipped and tripped in a fourteen line cage.
They say 'love hurts' as they shrug and they turn.
So it did, so it does, and these dead words still burn.

***