What follows is a collaborative poem written with Carolee Sherwood of the Poetry Collaborative. We wrote it yesterday as a line by line on g chat. I heart poetry and communications…
i will run
one footfall beckons another.
the dirt path is overgrown with
thorny brambles. the moon haunts
my travels, i long for something. it is not easy,
but i will run. my legs are covered
in the forest’s calligraphy, but i run
leaving pieces of my flesh behind.
when i’m moving like this, struggling,
stumbling, gasping, bleeding, i only
feel the next moment , the next
bend, the next clearing, the distance between
me and my own pumping heart.
i have ripped out that organ and left
it behind in a satin lined box
i laid it on my lover’s pillow with a note.
(i wonder why i still hear it beating.)
i will run until i start to recognize
the places i have already been,
leaving, returning, leaving, returning, leaving
again the one around whom i will forever pace.
So you think I can 
I love the way you two end it with the movement circling back. It changes the whole tone of the piece.
Beautiful rhythm and flow to these words. Very interesting how the poem changes from the forest to the satin-lined box, like a coffin for the heart. Really great.
i like how you broke this into stanzas and i love the line break where “it’s not easy” hangs on after “i long for something” … it gives a nice double meaning.
we’ll have to do it again sometime.
(maybe we should try an intoxicating g-chat next time ha ha)
I love intoxicating chats!!!! And thank you all for your feedback!
sigh, this almost makes me want to try a collaborative poem…. you always get such good results!
Slynne, this is fab! Of course. You and Carolee are a good poet-pair. And you are both runners! I think your voices blend fantastically — I would never pick this out as a collaborative poem. And yet I can sense both of you in it, and something that is more than both of you as well.
Also, I haven’t been around in forever! Love the new look. And the new quotation. I was listening to The Writer’s Almanac this morning and Keillor was talking about Rimbaud, and how when he was living the life of an impoverished poet he would tell a dirty joke to anyone who would buy him a drink.
What I’m saying is, you read the poems, I’ll tell dirty jokes, and someone will buy us both drinks, right?
Also, Emily, if you come back by to see this, please do try collaborative poetry! It’s not as scary as it seems! (OK, it is at first, but then the writing gets going and it’s really fabulous.)