Trigintiphobia

[scraps]

getting back out there

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[scraps]

Thanks so much to Cameron, Sorella, Matt and SP! Your energy is infectious!

[Scrow]

There are some lovely fragment-like, multi-sensory images in your last few, and the one you've just posted is fab - very end of April, a kind of slow erasure or melting!

Sarah

[Blythe]

scraps! how have I missed this thread til now?
the bits and pieces pieces are light but powerful.
The longer poems find and hold a center. Strong stuff.
Thanks for an amazing read!!

[scraps]

Hi Sarah and Blythe - thanks so much for stopping by and giving me a much needed boost! I really appreciate it!

[scraps]

xxxxxxxxxxxxbusy as an airport
xxxxxxthoughts fly off / thoughts fly in
xxxxxxxxxxxxbut you stay here

[SP Singer]

Hey again, let the last 3 roll like water off a beaver's back!!.....i mean, they mostly kinda do.... sort of...if we tilt our heads?

Getting Back Out There--i like to think of this theme as an outstretched elastic.

How did you cause that cool fade? love it.

[kristalynn]

I like the shape of your last, and the idea of thoughts flying like airplanes.

[Sorella]

Steve,
You have a perfect mastery of visuals and when you pare off inessentials, your idiosyncratic wisdom and sensitivity stun the reader.
See what you made me write after only a few gulps of coffee?

[scraps]

Thanks SP, kristalynn and Sorella! I feel guilty accepting your fluff when I've been so fluff-less - but know your selfless visits make my day!

[scraps]

The long and lovely of it

Anxiety meets you early,
remembers your mother straight off,

bright girl / pretty / bag of nerves
pity, really / by the time I got there
too late, you know [ Once
you stop using punctuation
it is hard to know
what a period means
and if it belongs
anywhere anymore

Anyway,
that was Anxiety
reminiscing to you about
your mother and you’re not
too sure how you feel about it
except to say, not great,
that much you’re pretty sure of]

[scraps]

*snip*

[SP Singer]

hello again, for the last time for NaPo, thanks so much for so much support. I'm very happy i went ahead at the last minute!

Anxiety: You could end it after S2 if you wanted. I love the first couplet most. I love the admission of how uncentering anxiety is, mostly coming in S3....it really pulls the curtain back, trying to get my bearings there.

Undressing in front of someone, i had no idea til the end this wasn't your own invention, it's the rolling it all in....funny that such a long list feels just so perfectly right for the title, which is a great one, i know i got it wrong, too late/early now.

Happy to have been with you through most of this!
SP

[Janelo]

Heya scraps.

It's been a hoot this month, thank you for bringing such good game, my friend.

Really enjoying the trickle that runs cleverly through these last three.

airport, when you come back to it after reading long and lovely and undressing, seems like the concisest (?) description of the feeling of anxiety.

Then a recursive thesis in lovely that warrants Freudian if not postmodern analysis, but here you set up the question at hand:

Once/you stop using punctuation
it is hard to know
what a period means
and if it belongs

Because this opens up the field of experience and storytelling entirely. It re-frames time and memory. What does the 'tyranny of the line' hold over us? If we let go of believing in periods/full stops ...are we to expect chaos? Or just some new sorta co-mingling of things.

Undressing with its list of admissions of every fear is just so conceptually strong Steve. Your absence of punctuation puts your reader to work to discern the phrases, which emerge from the page like letters emerge from the grid in a word find puzzle. An easy word find is such a nice diversion to soothe our anxious minds.

Here were a few of the phrases that emerged for me:

looking up men
wax statues being dirty
hair chemicals or chemistry happiness
wild animals crossing roads
imperfection being forgotten or ignored failure
beautiful women developing cancer

Oh my. there are so many. I just get lost in there. You've built a corn maze of words that functions like a poetry making machine.

Also, "Once you stop using punctuation" sounds like a prescription, or the promise of kicking a bad habit. Over-punctuating has been the thing in our way of reaching our goals. Letting go of it is the antidote to anxiety. I'm truly admiring your continual rebellion against the old school rules that we must punctuate and we must not write in all lower case and we must not center on the page. All due respect, they are good rules but also fuck that noise. You earned the right to break them all day long.

omg this line:

sexual abuse constipation feces or defecation clowns steep cliffs extreme

hahahahahaha

Just diggin the hell out of your work.

Janelo

[scraps]

Hiya SP and Jane - thanks so much for sticking with me the whole way! I couldn't have done it without you!