"It Began Last May"

Palm trees line the street,

Cold sweat shows on his face.

Ribbons of blood show on his shirt,

His movements are easy ginger.

There was no way in all this world that

Murder

Could smell like

Honeysuckle.

Pretty isn't it?

Hold on to that cheap cigar of yours.

Reflection:

I've never been particularly good at writing poetry, and writing a poem that's meant to be "found" in another piece of writing was no different. In face, I found writing this found poem to be more difficult that writing a "regular" poem. I'm sure others found this to be an easy task, considering the words are right there for you in whatever the prose may be-for me it was a screen play-but I felt as if this was limiting my creativity. This exercise required us to take words out of a piece in the order they appeared and make it sound poetic. Although I was lucky and my words came out sounding like a story, I felt as if I was hindered.

I didn't add any extraneous words, but I admit that I was more worried about sense rather than sound. Luckily for me, it sounded good while also making a lot of sense. I definitely kept the words in the right order and I edited the piece four times to make sure all of the "dead" words were removed. I tried to make it break at points when I though the story changed. If you read my poem, it tells a story of murder. I felt like my title was appropriate as well. Although those words were not in the found poem itself, I thought it would establish some sort of time line. To me this is effective because it tells you when the events leading up to the murder started. It's also kind of creepy because you don't know when the poem itself is taking place. "Last May," are when the events started, but when is "last May" in relation to right now? I look at my poem and I think of it as a piece of a bigger picture-maybe because it is one-that has an entire background as to why, who, and where.

I'm pretty happy with how the overall piece turned out, but getting to this point was not an easy task.