Stricken!

Writer’s Cramp
By Mark Cantrell


Someone once said,
That if you ever write a sentence
You really like, then
Strike it out!
Well, it seemed like sound advice,
So I set about putting word into deed
And sacrificed all the choicest phrases.
Painful, though it was, I sensed the wisdom
In the maxim,
After all, an author must learn, I know,
To butcher the babies born of their pen,
If their words are to thrive
In this callous, cruel Darwinian world.
Survival of the fittest
Demanded the cull,
So I wielded the red-tip scalpel-edged nib
And set to bloody work.
The pain was great, the sacrifice so noble
As the clauses and repetition, the purpled blobs
Of typo-sucked words sloughed free of the bloated manuscript
I so birthed.
The nimble-fingered slicing, slimmed down its girth,
Until the results spoke true of themselves.
I hacked, and I tucked, until the final creation was rendered
Purest perfection.
By the end of this cosmetic anticipation,
With all surplus trimmed,
I beheld the moment of perfection,
And witnessed...

“The End”


Mark Cantrell,
Manchester,
22 August 2008


Copyright © August 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

Posted in: POETRY