Sunday, December 20, 2009

Thesis revisions

I've officially begun the revision process for my thesis. The prep work for this endeavor took quite a while. I had to track down all of the original drafts of my work. This includes all of the hand-written copies scribbled on notebook paper, napkins, the back of old electricity bills, as well as scouring my computer's files for other versions, typed drafts, etc. It's interesting to see how some of the pieces of developed.

I compiled a list of all the drafts, and came up with a rough "table of contents" containing 33 poems. (This number was derived from a number higher than 50 poems....but some were cut/unfinished/unreadable, etc.)

I typed and printed a list of the poems with which I am going to work, and have no begun making changes and trying them out. I'm even posting some to Facebook to gather feedback from people in the outside world. So far....mostly unsuccessful. This is not because people don't offer good suggestions, but because I'm a relative nobody, and no one is interested in reading the work of nobody.

...Which reminds me, I thought I would post a poem here just for kicks. Think of it as a treat.......a treat for all of my non-readers. This is such a mind-trip, talking about my general unpopularity to...well, a group of readers that may or may not exist.

Either way, enjoy!

The Skipping Stone


Jonathan A. Peacock


George said living life is like hearing

the scraping of a stone bounding across

a lake, that between each hop is

uncertainty of what’s coming, or what

isn’t, that in those leaps we’re

falling, and at the end we’re sinking

beneath the ripples and we watch them

scuttle to the shore to make tiny

tidal waves where that stone was picked,


that this was why people scrape

their heels along the floor, that they

search for a way to hang on, that

one day they’d walk right through

that floor, worn soles and all, and tread

the dirt, and those who’re left to listen would

be lucky to hear anything at all: That

those heels take the place of the stone and

plunk and plunk and plunk and gone.


-John


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