redact

Today's word is

redact

Ho-hum.  Another day, another terribly unmoving verb.  Well, let's see what we can do about that.

*****
Thursday, 5:22 p.m.

I thought this was such a boring word, and yet I wrote two poems using it, one all in a gigantic reactive rush to something I read on someone else's blog, and one in a contemplative bathtime moment where the water may just have been a little too hot.  I'm only posting one, though.  That other one just isn't nice when I take it out and pop it into black and white.

And the heart skin chafes
and the blister bursts
and everything you've been not saying
comes spilling out on the floor
where you both look at it
and start to cry
and then the blaming starts
and evil cruelty which is all about vanities
competing for high ground
safe ground
ground above the mud
and rocks and shards
and all those chances to hurt
and nothing can be hidden anymore
and very little can be seen
and nothing can be explained
and nothing that is said now can ever be redacted
and you won't know what that will mean
like what happens with testimony to which the prosecutor
has objected but which hangs there anyway
right there in the stuffiness
in the airlessness
in front of the breathless jurors' faces
and every witness is also a juror
and opinions are thick
and knowledge is thin
even your knowledge is thin
and there is drama
and there is criticism
and there is support and betrayal
and the witnesses and the jurors are guilty of both
and it always surprises you no matter which you see
and in the middle of everything that flies
are still you two
crying and fighting over the broken thing
that's still there, and still broken
and you look at each other and to each other
and you don't know if you should just kill it,
just toss that broken thing away
and you dare each other to be the one to do it
so it won't be you who failed
you who caused
you who broke
and you both caused
and you both broke
and you are still there
still standing there looking at it
and it's going to take both of you on the ground
scrabbling with whatever glue you can find
and a commitment to imperfect results
and all the risks they imply
to the understanding that holes and cracks
don't cheapen but enrich
and you didn't do it to each other
you just did it
together
and that pain you feel
that's just your humanity
reminding you this is all real
irrevocable
and going to be forgiven

Comments

[MB]

Wow, what an arc to the final soft zing! Phew! ;-) I like it.