Written Off

I am
writing down
pages of words,
words on pages, lists;
in this, my life-sentence,
fingers crab, hands repeat,
skin connects with instruments,
nerves transmit, one way
and another.

I am
writing down this message:
sense compressed into measure,
nonsense polished into submission,
what I want to say, worried at,
revised, hackneyed phrases
honed to perfection…

…until these
turns of phrase
pivot back to nonsense
again; again.

© BH, 2018

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I made a kind of response to a poem (shared on Poetry24) by Howard Altmann - The Gulls - featured as the Guardian’s poem of the week - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/03/poem-of-the-week-the-gulls-by-howard-altmann

We all liked the poem though we had an illuminating discussion about punctuation, poetic form and, well, on my part, lists.

I wrote this poem as part of my Facebook post. I’ve tidied it up a bit now. But not much. And I’ve left the trailing anaphora* as a nod to Altmann.

As you can see, it’s a list of things. Only the order is poetic…

*I'm now inclined to believe this repetition at the end is more probably epistrophe…