Wrestling with the beast

I've been working on a new poem for the past couple of days.  Most of the work has been done late at night, when I really should have been in bed.  This has its advantages, sig other is asleep and so I can concentrate totally on what I'm doing, but I've been up for about 18 hours already, so the brain alternates between fog and mush.  Things that look really good at midnight, look less cool in the brain fog at 6:15 a.m. the next morning, and downright awful by 8 p.m.

The feel of the poem is there, at least I'm sure I have that much, and there are some phrases to break your heart.  But, as I have the feel and tone of the poem, the bits that don't fit stand out like a sore thumb.  I've been dicking around with changing the wording--back and forth, back and forth (how many times can you write stet next to the same jumble of words, and which word is the one that's supposed to stay?)--but so far I haven't solved all the problems I'm having to my satisfaction.

This poem matters to me because it was inspired by Leslie Cheung.  It is a look at the experience of his friends in the wake of his death.  The experience is shared by many who have lost a beloved friend, and it doesn't matter if that friend was famous or not, that isn't why we love our friends.  For this reason, I want to get it right. I have to carve out at least one consecutive hour tonight to pick it back up.  If I can just fully concentrate for an hour and have a functioning brain, I think I can figure out what's not working.  This is always the first step.  You clear away the debris left from the junk that doesn't belong and, if you are lucky, something comes to you that is what you've been meaning to write all along.  Writing poetry is not like writing prose--you can't force it into shape.  You have to let down your guard and let it ambush you.  Then you have to use all of your faculties to get just the right words, word order, punctuation, etc.  But even then, I don't want to use my cognitive function too much because it has a tendency to suck all of the life out of the words.  I use that part of my brain to write reports on year-end demographic figures for our programs at work.  Poetry, like music, is when we let the playful faculties come out and play.  So here is to a weekend of play!