You might call it messing about. I call it another experiment

Pen and Patterns Typed Up

(the second third fourth draft)

I am writing in my diary

or notebook and now

I am judicious with a word or two

so that I find myself struggling

while I hold a pen, not a smartphone,

which anyway I do not own. But I’m

familiar enough with technology,

the internet and word doc, to find I’m

myself responding in automatic world

correction mode. My expectation of a

(phantom) auto-correct would likely

lessen diminish if I take myself

out of that world and compose

with pen alone.

I like the pen, a tool that respects any

additions, or striking out, though the full

wretched (thinking) process is left (entirely)

in my hands. (Oh, never say inadequate the pen.)

Thankfully, over the years, these (repairs)

are becoming less which is no more than

I would hope; usually, a word (or phrase) left out

so that the marginalia extends (and those words

not required! Well it’s six of one, half a dozen

of the other. Sometimes almost another stanza added.)

An honesty of the first draft,

a beauty in such mistakes as I make.

There is, I suppose a pattern to them.

(Would it, I ask myself, be more

appropriate that for this copy

(into word doc) I should then

have selected something like

Segoe Script)

I’m world etc = first draft deleted words

(phantom) (thinking) (entirely) etc = second, third or fourth draft words or phrases deleted or (added)

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