Day Twenty-Nine and a Catchy Title Escapes Me

It’s day twenty-nine and I didn’t get an early enough start.

I thought, as the day kept getting on with itself, and I wasn’t, that maybe there was something in the archives I could slap up on the blog, then take the rest of the day to come up with something fresh to end the month on, tomorrow.

A thought flashed across my mind; the remembrance of something I’d already written, a year or more ago.  So I set myself to digging, and I found it.  I did a few edits on it, because this poem I haven’t been able to let go of, and even submitted to a couple of places at the end of 2022, always felt bloated and croaky, like words coming out of someone who had spent a long winter with laryngitis, forgetting what their real voice sounded like. 

I was about ready to copy and paste from Word Doc to WordPress, when the whisper of a thought floated in the space between bits and bytes.

“Is it, has it, was it, did I already… maybeeeee?”

Scroll-scroll-scroll on the blog, back, back, to day eleven.  One loud exhale through pursed lips.  One more click, and, and.

Damn.

See, my problem with writing is, well… that.  Give it any name you want, it’s that my archives have kinda taken the form of a cave full of junk drawers, all piled up on each other, every drawer neatly labeled, but with descriptions that tell you absolutely nothing about what’s in them.  It’s a filing system that could get you fired, if you were doing the filing for someone else.  For me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have upwards of a dozen different versions of poems, in various stages of editing.  And even though this is a sort of funny story that will have a fun ending in another 50 words or so, over the days to come, I may have to address this problem before I move forward with the plan I blogged about only yesterday. 

Or maybe I’ll just delete all of it, and start over again.

We’ll see.

But before I cross, or burn, that bridge when I come to it, here’s the thought I came up with to leave for you at the end of day twenty-nine.  How about BOTH POEMS?  Day eleven AND day twenty-nine, side by side, to show you what goes through my mind, every time I write a poem for submission.  Call it the “what to leave in… what to leave out” according to Bob Seeger. 

So, for my next-to-the-last day of NanoPoblano 2023, TWO versions of the same poem.  Also, please tell me which one you like better in the comments.  Because remember, there are no wrong answers, only wrong publishers to reject them. 

Insert laughter here.

.

Half-Staff (day eleven)

I guess the next thing would be to outlaw flags at half-staff.  That is,

if we’re not going to outlaw

their cause. 

It would be easier to do that, because remembering the names of the dead is hard.

.

Half-Staff (day twenty-nine)

I guess the next thing is

to outlaw flags at half-staff,

if we’re not going to outlaw

their cause. 

This would be easier, because

remembering the names of the dead

is hard.

.

Talk to you tomorrow.