One obvious difference is the idea of putting these up here "for all to see" ... in the past, I wrote A LOT ... typically 250 poems a year. My publishing pattern was to put out a very small (30 copies) edition of a comb-bound xeroxed volume of the whole output of the year, and then every two years select from these the "top 10%" or so ... eventually whittling it down to about 48 poems to go in a book. While some of the poems that didn't make the cut for the books might have shown up in Eschaton's quarterly literary mag, The Terminal Journal, for the most part, 90% of what I wrote was never seen by more than a handful of lucky (?) folks.
I have been planning (for quite a while, actually) on having an "archive" site up that will have ALL my poety (some 2-3,000 pieces at this point) up (heck, you can even get cool promo items for it HERE ... talk about ego issues!), and this might just get me off my butt on that project, who knows!
Anyway, here for your consideration (OK, so imagine Rod Serling saying that) is the first fruit of my new venture back into the world of poetry...
AND IS AGAIN
so far away
the trail so strange
we have set distant
and become drift
this then returns
but without form
nothing we can touch
and only know
too many cords
lines of binding
too many threads
weaving back through time
have we changed anything
by this silence?
have we shifted
or sought stagnation?
no one will know
the cost of this
no one suspect
how great a risk
was ventured in the game
to take away
controlling hands
and the programming voice
but what has changed?
is any new?
has darkness lightened
or only turned
to deeper routes
to reach us yet?
we feel its tendrils
and fear its grasp
and now, to this,
wider still...
more naked,
so exposed
taking refuge
and blasting it apart
burning brightly
in conflagration's stand
- Brendan Tripp
10/04/2000
Copyright © 2000 by Brendan Tripp