Let’s face it, pressure ruins poetry. Poetry needs time to take form, a bit like it takes time for crude oil to form from fossil trees. It looks to me like the closer I write to the Phi Kappa Phi deadline, the worse the poem. This issue’s winner, who wrote a slightly modified Villanelle on the topic of recovery and used the form and meter to good effect certainly deserved to win more than I did. I doubt my submission on the topic of “Scare Tactics” will do any better, written as it was the day of the deadline…
But when has mediocrity kept a blogger from publishing? Here’s my poem on recovery - yep, an absence of rhymes is a pretty good indicator I didn’t spend enough time on the poem.
The Next Dive
I fall, stiff with disbelief,
toward what looks like
– when I can see it –
a gun-metal whipped-cream froth
that hurtles closer, closer
despite my wishing it away
The cold slap of water
against my fingerbrowtorso
strips me of illusions
robs me of breath
to force my focus upward
for pain can wait
I pierce the waves
and fresh air fills my lungs
and old doubts fill my mind
with every stroke of tingling arm
the shore draws closer, closer
but only the shore
My hands grab rock and shrub
and grope around for more
my heart beats in my throat
straining ahead of my body
to climb back up so he can
push me off again
