11. The Shape of Content

Obsessive Compulsive

As inevitable as a clock’s tick, my hand slips back as I count.
One, skip one, three, four.
tick, Tick, tick, tick.
Why can’t I be normal?

One, skip one, three, four.
It is compulsive. It is repulsive.
Why can’t this be normal?
I try so hard.

It is repulsively compulsive though,
and each time my hand and mind combat. But it continues.:
One, skip one, three, four
I try so hard--

My hand and mind combat. Will it continue?
My hand jerkily falters.
One--two--three, four.
I hold still so I won’t be this way.

But my hand begins to falter.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I can’t hold still. I can’t be this way.
As inevitable as a clock’s tick, my hand slips back. And I re-count.


I think I can already feel how much 3200 has changed my ideas about poetry and myself as a poet. I still say I'm not, and I don't know why, because I don't hate it anymore, but I stand by that idea. Regardless, I can already look at past poems, just from the last couple of semesters, and compare them to poems of the last few weeks and see/hear a difference. I don't know if my readers totally see the depth I do, but that's the next step.

I say that because of the above poem. I wrote it for a class last year and at the time really like the outcome. I thought that for only my first or second try at a pantoum it wasn't so bad. I guess I still believe that, considering it was also about the fourth poem I'd written in the past six years, but now I can look at it and think "Ah, I should have done that."

Other than the obviously horrific and unoriginal title, I notice several places with opportunities to make the lines so much stronger and so less cliched. But what I still enjoy about this particular piece is the subject in relation to the form. What better subject matter is there, for a rigid form such as a pantoum, than being bound by OCD?

I'm looking forward to editing this into a better state as well as trying another pantoum this weekend!