In Black and White Friday, March 26, 2004 I'm in a poetry mood, because I decided to cobble my short stories into an anthology manuscript, and thought a few poems would balance it out nicely. I used to be a poet. I wasn't ever a particularly good poet, but I was getting there. I'd sloughed off the worst conceits that all beginners have, I'd written myself out past the usual sentiments and garbage. You see, when we begin, we are all hackneyed, because everything is new to us. Sure, we read it a million times, but still coming out through the fingers, everything feels soul jarring original because it's the way we said it. We all need to write, write, until we're through that, until we've gotten it all out of our system and can really write the things that are new and original...or at least as n&o as it gets. Then I got mairried. Life took over. I wrote poems, sometimes, and shoved them away, but I was no longer quite a poet. At lot of my news stuff is cribbed on the back of Interlibrary Loan print outs and fax request forms, even a few on my old stand by, paper towels. My filing cabinet is filled with files, bulging with folded up menus, placemats, napkins, various used library forms, scraps of note paper, tatooed in a rainbow of inks. If you spread out all of my poems, in date order (as most of them are dated) you would find the map of my life. If I ever truly wanted to find myself, I suppose that's what I would do. Then I got divorced. Everything's seared shut and now, when I try to write poems, I don't feel comfortable in my own skin anymore, my brain doesn't want to think in poem shapes, and even my attempts at reclaiming the poet that I was, such as the Nuemonic Devices I post from time to time, fail unless I allow them to fit into blocky paragraph shapes and left justified wisdom. Before, Neumonic Devices were short, few lines, that grasped a thought, a situation, a poem of simple power and now they're, when we're being generous, proems. I'll have to look up some of my better devices and post them. They went over well at poetry soirees, where I'd get up, nerve myself with too many cookies, and stand behind a podium to read my poems. And people, strangers, seemed to generally/genuinely like them, as did my friends, but, then, you expect kindness from those you love. You know, I was able to get up and read for the same reason that I can mail my stories and books to publishers. Because I know I'm not that bad. I'm not that grand, either, and could be better, but really, in context, I'm not that bad. This poem was part of a class exercise, believe it or not. The prof. showed us a a black and white picture, and urged us to write something on it. To this day I like to use that as an exercise. In Black and White By Cindy Lynn Speer In black and white He remembers The shadows of children Dancing, playing, The reflected light of louvers And a million shades of grey. A millions shades of grey And not one spark Of dapple greens And slender browns Or how the sun shines golden On water and rocks. On water and rocks Like the ones that formed the path The bright shimmering ribbon That ran to the shadows And the cement arch hidden By leaves and weeds. By leaves and weeds And sapling trees The wizard knows his navigation home. All that he needs is courage That he, too, may take up his staff And pick his way. And pick his way Off the cracked asphalt, Over the rope of rusted guardrail, And down to the dragon’s tail. Ankle deep in emerald scales he’ll turn away From the world of black and white. Permalink Cindy scribed this at 7:09 PM 0 comments

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