fallen verses

A Pin Worked Loose

Tatterdemalion slink into depleted villas,
each step chasing memories deeper into
these antiquated courtyards.

Here are artifacts which nobody recognizes.
They remain untouched. Visitors, focused inward,
do not notice them. They tarnish, fade, rust.

Outside, civil guards scream obscenities.
Someone has posted Lorca’s broadsides
believing both duende and Andalusia are omnipresent.

Somewhere else, meditation resurfaces a lost “I.”
In that same place a girl is born. An old woman dies.
Later, the process is repeated. And again. And again.

In an open notebook are words brilliant but forgettable-
tenuously held together scraps called verses.
The page is a pin worked loose- the center holds,
but a breeze carries the frayed edges out of sight.

It seems such a waste to let those words stand alone on this page. Especially when so many of them will be repeated from piece to piece, each a playful rehuffling of context and content.

Tatterdemalion is a word I have only encountered previously in a Terry Brooks novel: Knight of the Word. It was a magic creature, animated by the spirit of a dead child, built of scraps. Similar to its real definition in an essence. Tatters, the ends, fading, decay. I also think it echoes the essence of this excercise. We all started with scraps and are putting them together.

Most of my poetry is written in a first-person perspective. I edited to remove the “I” from this poem. It seemed, to me, the “I” was too strong an identity for the poem to hold. The “I” was too complete. So I deleted it.

I’m curious to see so many other takes on this arrangement of words. See both what words get used most often and how their meanings change from place to place.

Additional information: I wrote the majority of this poem while listening to James Blunt’s album Back to Bedlam. Judge as you will.

Check out everyone else’s responses at Read Write Poem while you’re at it!