A Revision

If you've been reading my blog at all, you know that I've started writing poetry here, not particularly good poetry, but trying to work more on craft, trying to experiment with words on a screen. Tim suggested that I take one of my poems and cut out as many words as I could, just as an exercise. So I did. Below is the original poem, and it's followed by the edited version.

Apart

An accidental interloper, he
Filled in the empty spaces of one heart.
He moved between their two magnetic poles,
A force, himself, to move the two apart.

At first, he hardly noticed the affair.
His curiosity had seen the pair
Impregnable it seemed to the outside,
The unlatched heart, broke, hidden in its lair.

A spark, impassioned, flew from their cold hearth
and kindled flames of folly in his breast.
Swept up in the idea of hot romance,
Put life's relation to a bitter test.

The pair's polarity reversed, tears shed.
The barreness unspoke acknowledged now.
His heart quite broken in the aftermath
Of ill-considered pleasure in a bed.

Here's the revision:

Apart

Accidental, he
filled empty spaces
between two magnetic poles,
a force, himself.

He hardly noticed.
Curiosity
impregnable to the outside,
unlatched, broke, hidden.

A spark flew
kindled folly.
Swept up hot.
Put life to a bitter test.

Polarity reversed,
barreness unspoke
quite broken,
ill-considered pleasure in a bed.