Fallen Stilts

Ah, here we are again folks. But wait! I'm a day early! "He only posts on Fridays!" I hear some of you shouting; well, perhaps you all deserve a treat for reading any of these posts thus far...

A poem of mine was published on Tuesday at www.lifeasahuman.com, where you can also find copies of Destiny's Implacability, Vicariously...Failing? and as of Monday 15th July, Emperor of the Mundane. They're edited in accordance with word restrictions and editing strictures and a whole host of details we writers seemed to be struggling against the tides of. Writing is in itself a volatile, tricky business. Your poem, article, novel is as a boat. When we believe ourselves finished, we might see it as something similar to the Titanic - the zenith of creation, the most exemplary form of boat we might ever have created. Why? Well, we're proud, and excited, and a little overwhelmed, and almost always not ready to plunge into the waters of criticism and reviewing. We've invested all this time, we deserve to hold a little confidence in both the creation and ourselves, don't we? Our boats, it turns out, have holes in, be these small grammatical holes, errors of style, voice, unhinged plot, absolutely anything. And as with any hole in any boat, you're bound to suffer for it!

As such, I am going to deconstruct this poem on Fractured Paths next week, possibly Thursday again. Some of what I thought about, some of what I intended, some of what I simply had to work and work against while the currents plunged and deluged around me, as I struggled to fix these egregious errors.

I leave you now with the poem and a farewell until tomorrow to those of you still standing.

Fallen Stilts

These waves dart, back and forth,

the sand rises, disperses, riddled

with pervasive salts.

Four robust stilts halt

this inexorable tide, while

I wait, suspended,

locked in this gaol for eternity,

now slow is the back and forth

rock, and stone and silt,

they are whispering to me,

imploring me to return, taunting

me because I can’t.

Left more to my thoughts now,

invaded by the slaughtering juggernauts:

Anger and Jealousy, they feed their

vigour through my absences, as I

shuffle on this swaying beech,

infected with rot and decay.

I am drawn to the edge, to

stare down and see only the stretching

wooden dais, underpinning my shack of

abandonment. The grey pebbles

beyond are forsaken, lost in the

cacophony of losses.

Shards of regret pierce me,

biting, ever more acerbic,

circling my thoughts once more

to the irony: four wooden stilts and

the rocker, and I, trapped

in this impassable no man’s land.

Ineffable is the void, halted are

my pleasures; I am left with

one comrade: Grief. Grief for my own

splintered stumps. 

S.C.