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R.A. Stewart
April 12th, 2017, 12:37 PM
I am usually hesitant to post poems on a forum like this if I have any thought of trying to get them published. The problem is that a lot of editors consider anything that has been posted anywhere to be "previously published work" and they won't consider it. In a way I can see the point, but it could equally, I think, be considered the equivalent of reading your work at a local café or handing copies out to some friends.

But the odds of getting anything published are so infinitesimal at best that I don't want to make my chances even worse.

So what I'm going to post is a work in progress. I think this one has real possibilities, but I just can't get the middle section (fifth stanza) to work. (I had a draft with a much better version, but I can't find it! Grrr.)

If I ever get this published, or if I ever get anything published again, I'll post a link to it as Lady Onogaro did with her Mockingheart Review poem.


Neverland

Now see their first meeting
by moon and night light
in the high unguarded room:

brave, gentle, visionary girl;
proud eternal boy
perched at the window
with incandescent eyes.

Come, come, come,
live in our burrow,
share our patchwork life.
We are rich in the coin of wonder:
be our mother and let nothing change.

No, no, no, no, no ...
but can you really fly?

Oh yes, they flew
past the second star to the right ...
to days, to weeks, to years
with dangerous mermaids and the Indian tribe,
with battles, treacheries, the nightly medicine,
sometimes a tight embrace to numb the captain's dreams;
and stories, stories.

And from the Jolly Roger's deck,
one glorious last battle done,
they took their leave;
for stories too must end.
And all of us are native to two lands
and, one brave night, must choose.

She held his promise in her hand
as many years as she could make it stay,
but, knew, perhaps, one night
she looked her last into
the blithe forgetful eyes.

O heart that could not change, goodbye.

Paddler
April 12th, 2017, 01:34 PM
I like your poem. R.A. Thank you for posting it.

I just finished reading a huge two-volume set of books containing a biography of Robert Heinlein. In it he said that he only got to write for about three months out of the year. The rest of the time was spent at book signings all over the world, set up by his publisher, and in legal battles with publishers who were trying to swindle him out of his contracted royalties and with out and out claim-jumpers. This was in addition to the efforts of his wife who handled the business with publishing agents. From this, I get the impression that publishers don't have a very large stock of scruples. The words "previously published works" don't seem to have the same meaning to them as they do to us.

Marsilius
April 12th, 2017, 02:16 PM
As melancholy as Barrie's book. Lovely.

Lady Onogaro
April 12th, 2017, 02:26 PM
R.A. Stewart,

If I may offer a suggestion--the poem really seems to start with the third stanza. It's as if you were "warming up" with the first few.

How about beginning with "They flew past the star to the right..."?

Edit vigorously any prosy bits.

And try Mockingheart Review. Don't be discouraged; my acceptance rate is about one in five or six (submissions, not poems; I usually submit three to five poems per submission).

I hope this helps.

R.A. Stewart
April 12th, 2017, 03:04 PM
Thanks for reading, everyone!

Lady Onogaro, I'll try those suggestions, thanks. And I'll try Mockingheart Review, too. If I could get my acceptance rate up to one in six, I'd be happy!