Day 198 Pt 2: Another Cut and Paste

Yesterday I used an old children's book as a tool to make some found poetry. I particularly love this non-threatening way of writing and used it with my middle school students back home all of the time. I get a particular kind of energy scanning through text, looking for words and phrases that jump out. Rearranging lines like some kind of word architect. Or like walking into a kitchen with all sorts of ingredients and making a surprise meal. It's one of my favorite things to do.

Yesterday's story was a bit limited, using a source containing simple and repetitive sentence structures. Today I dove into an article on CNN for material. I decided to log on and use the first headlining article I saw. It was about Britian vowing to confront ISIS after journalist David Haines was murdered.

Heavy material. I found I had to distance myself from the original context of the text in order to pull from it. Here is a text already laden with grief. How could a story- my story- Gareth's story- be found in there?

I allowed myself the freedom to isolate words, move words, and repeat words when I felt it was right. And there, there in this article was the story of my love, his great tragedy, and my deep missing of him.

-------------------------------

Together

In the two previous

years

he was most alive and enthusiastic in

his joy and anticipation

placing his hands on

me

here at home

coming from him specifically

He was, in the right mood,

the life and soul of the party

He helped whoever needed help

there when I needed him

and on other times

not like the same man

the most stubborn irritating pain in the ass

absent

the latest in a string of

troubled areas

he

falls

on the ground

rather

brutally

an emergency

really

he wanted to.

(he wanted to?)

a close friend and ally in grief

had attempted to rescue

committed to fighting

to assist

Those efforts to

drive back, dismantle, and

ultimately destroy death

and what it stands for

are faulty

each and every one of us

would probably say

we can help them

we can protect them

we will do so in a calm, deliberate way

but with an iron determination

this will only accelerate your destruction

will only drag you down

make things worse

some are

tortured prisoners

warped ideology

He was

He recently spent a year

of peace

He was strong

He was good

He was not strong enough

a day after

the fall

brutal

emergency

foreign

death

masked

I don't know

I don’t know how

a barren desert landscape

shown briefly in the will

poses a massive threat

at this moment

came a reminder

an image of him holding

me

sweetheart

He would probably say

this is not about

death

sweetheart

you have to confront this menace

sweetheart

the most important element

of this whole sad affair

is

we were

together

we were

together

but we were

unwinnable

I need to know that this-

that plans which had begun

before becoming

absent

before the fall

before death

did not lead to

crisis

to the murderous, meteoric rise

of grief

I hope that he felt the same way.