Entrance

[tectak]

V. 2

Entrance

I was going to open
with a story
of how the words came to me
as if they were the gardener
and I the weed,
stalking the azaleas at noon;

but then I thought better of it
and searched instead
for the right definition to share:

to dig,
fettered to an old English accent,
or plunge,
with roots
nestled in a French countryside;

yet so many words
waited at my doorstep,
some in ties and skirts,
some with smiling mothers,
others with postage on their forehead,
I decided to keep looking
for a way to begin,

lingering in the aisles
where introductions pushed grocery carts,
peaking above the collars
of poems in the library,
breaking into their bedrooms
with a screwdriver and notepad;

when finally, I heard enough
like a judge in a courtroom.

Let us begin
with a moment of silence.

No shells from the past,
no trudges through a dictionary's forest.

Let us begin
with the breath before
the voice,

the pause
laid as a bridge
we have only begun
to cross.


_____________________________________
Original

I was going to open
with a story
of how the words came to me
as if they were the gardener
and I the weed,
stalking the azaleas at noon;

but then I thought better of it
and searched instead
for the right definition to share:

to dig,
fettered to an old English accent,
or plunge,
with its roots
nestled in a French countryside;

yet so many words
waited at my doorstep,
some in ties and skirts,
some with smiling mothers,
others with postage on their forehead,
I decided to keep looking
for a way to begin,

lingering in the aisles
where introductions pushed grocery carts,
peaking above the collars
of poems in the library,
breaking into their bedrooms
with a screwdriver and notepad;

when finally, I heard enough
like a jury in a courtroom.

Let us begin
with a moment of silence.

No shells from the past,
no trudges through a dictionary's forest.

Let us begin
with the breath before
the voice,

the fire before
the candle,

the dust before
the polish;

a quiet opening
that winds
to a softer,
softened
end.

I can see what you were trying to accomplish here but you may deny it. It may well be that this free thinking technique sometimes leads to a piece of prose which improves as it unfolds, rather in the way that a jingle tune writer tinkles the ivory hoping that something will "come" to him. It is a hit and miss affair as you seem to to have realised after the first stanza; and while I am in the area could you describe the thought process that you use to demark stanzas as I cannot get the subtlety

Look, it may be outside my pay-scale but could you just rewrite this as I am genuinely at a loss to decide whether it is good, bad or ugly.
What I can say is that this is an organic piece of free verse in danger of iterating into a fractal. You must stop it at all costs as it has already begun to degrade into endless complexity and repetitive patterns. I believe that you felt this, too, as so very few examples of this genre ( there must be a better word) end on the word "end". I should have been a shrink!
Best,
Tectak