We Can Fix It, Rebuild It, Make it Stronger: 26/30 2011 Edits

First the unedited word salad that was the poem for that day:

26/30

Most days I am lucky

to find my head

still attached where

I left it.

My feet have a habit

of dancing when I

least expect them to.

I get a lot of looks

waiting for the bus.

If my hands knew

what they were doing

this poem would have

been written by now.

My shoulders ache

all day resisting

the urge to shrug.

I get tired of telling

them not to.

I leave my shoelaces

knotted when I kick

off my shoes.

Loose laces are a

spastic dancer's easiest

worst nightmare.


At the time I was taking public transportation to and from work and was spending about an hour each way dealing with the commute. Plus I'd usually end up getting to one of the stops before the next leg of transportation. I'd play music so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone, or be questioned about whether or not I had a ticket for the trip.

Rereading I am not sure the real idea I was going for with it. I was probably trying o talk about my commute in some way that I thought was clever at the time. Now, 5 years later, I have no idea what I was going for, but I did see potential in some of the lines I had written. My first instinct when I am editing a poem is to rearrange it and see what else it can say without changing words. That usually leads me to a better idea of what I want the poem to be when it's as finished as I can make it. Then adding or changing lines becomes easier.

I'm not sure if I did a good job of preserving the original idea, but then it's been a while and at the time I was not really just putting words on a page to try and beat a deadline of the end of the month. It wasn't a total lost cause though. Here are the edits for this one, I'm pleased with the direction it went.

26/30 Edits

If my hands knew

what my head was doing

this poem would have

been written already.

My shoulders ache

all day resisting

the urge to shrug.

I get tired of telling

them not to.

Choosing instead to find

places to hide from me,

most days I am lucky

if I find my head still

attached where I left it.

In the face of the

future’s endless everything,

standing strong against it

makes me feel like I’m always

going to come up with less

than I need to take control.


It was weird editing something I have been disconnected from for years. I can't be sure how much of this is a reflection of the idea of the original poem and how much of it is the influence of my current state of mind. I like the new poem, even if I don't know that I ever felt the new poem.

Isn't it a little early to plan April's 30 in 30?

Hell no it isn't. It's been 3 years since I even attempted it. This year one of my goals is to get that done again. It is a challenge someone invented for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). No clue who it was or why, but when I heard about it I liked the idea. The idea as I heard it was to post whatever you wrote that day on social media. I don't think I ever did that last part of it, but I still tried to write 30 poems in 30 days. I was successful with the time frame 2 years in a row. Then life happened and I got distracted from it for the past few years.

I found what worked the best was to come up with a massive list of random titles for poems that I can then use during that 30 day period to knock out some of the ideas. It's a good chance to test out ideas and explore themes repeatedly until I've found what it is about them that I really draws me in.

This year I'm not sure how I'll handle it. I feel like an important step for it would be to post it to social media, but I don't really have Facebook anymore and no one is on Google + that is paying enough attention for it to count. I could try Instagram this year, but I'm not entirely sure everybody would be able to read my hand writing.

Jesus, I'm already looking for excuses not to do it. Bad habits die kicking and screaming. 2016 is cold-hearted though and gives no shits about my excuses, so between now and April I gotta figure out the best social media platform (aside from my ignored blog of course) to share my 30 in 30 poems on.

Over the next 90-ish days, I'm going to prep for getting it done and done on time this year. I'm gonna spend my prep time creating a title list, looking at old poems I like, and fixing ones I don't. It'll remind me I am capable of meeting my own expectations and practice at my least favorite part of writing: editing old work.