The Story’s Structure

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
The Story's Structure
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I wrote a poem this morning. You can hear Sparty snoring in the background. He has been sick so I couldn’t bear to move him. Apologies for that.

THE STORY'S STRUCTURE

The beginning is here. 
You set up what might happen.
You show all the character’s flaws, 
What they need to learn, the lie they believe
About themselves, about the world. 
Spoiler: This is what they’ll learn by the end.
They will learn that the lie is not true. 
This is where the character waits in the margins
Or hides in cupboards or bedrooms
To come flouncing or trudging onto the page,
Defined by black ink usually, by words and actions and a meet-cute.

The middle is where things get murky. 
This is meant to be the bulk of the book’s life.
Your character is past the point of no return,
They have nestled into a giant peach or a wizard world,
And things are fun and games, but not necessarily,
Actually, fun unless they are into hard lessons, 
And everything they want being blocked not just by outside forces—
Those beastly antagonists—but also by the lie they keep choosing to believe. 
But good things happen here, too. Boys fly brooms.
Enchanted forests are explored. We are into a world of magic, of falling in love.

Until we are not. And that is the end.
Which sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? 
It’s a bed without a head on a pillow.
It’s a final set of empty pages without words.
That’s too negative. This is what it is: 
The end is the place where realizations happen
For us and for the character we’ve been watching.
We find out that we’ve both been believing a lie.
We find out that we don’t have to wait in the damn
Margins or stay in the lines that march across a life
—I mean a page—and we damn sure don’t have to be
Plath in a kitchen, Sexton in a garage. Hemingway in the foyer.
We can choose to continue. This is what sequels and semicolons are for: 
For learning all over again; adventuring all over again; becoming all over again. 
We are more than three act structures, aren’t we? 
			
			I think we are.

GHOSTED

It’s a poem!

                GHOSTED

It was like one of those self-help blogs
That only talk in abstractions
About the power of self-love

Or how to end a toxic relationship.
That’s when I realized 
That the person not showing up

Was me. All that bemoaning
About not putting in the effort,
Not taking the time to make sure

Sentences weren’t orders
And feelings were considered,
To temper my tone with kindness, 

It was just me being the bully to myself
Before ghosting off to do other things
For people, with people, to people
without even saying goodbye.

Tourist Love–A poem

I wrote a poem.

                         TOURIST LOVE

At dusk as I tiptoed along the Shore Path,
Between tourists grumbling about fog and the price of lobster,
Listening to the sound of whaler motors humming 
out existence, I fell in love with a rose bush.

Not the cultivated kind, but the stubborn ones that cling to sea walls,
Bees fluttering about, wild and limby, stabbing at passersby, 
Bright pink and white blooms, calling you in 
Without asking for anything back. Just existing. No worries.

It knows it has survived drought and hurricane winds.
It knows it will survive those things again.
It knows it might be noticed or not. 
It doesn’t matter.

In the bright morning light, the fog eventually cleared,
And I feel in love with two kids who wandered off the path
To push at a precociously balanced rock, thinking somehow
They’d knock that giant boulder into the sea

Even though a zillion others had tried before, hands flat
Against granite, legs braced, putting all their weight into it. 
This is the sweetest kind of belief, of love, that love of self,
Not worried about what others think as you push and push and push. 

American Eulogy

Billy Collins

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Billy Collins
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Tough Enough

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Tough Enough
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!


For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.


https://livinghappy.substack.com/

Off The Record

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Off The Record
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!


For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.


Reveille

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Reveille
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!


For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.


The Ask

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
The Ask
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!


For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.


Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

Christmas Cheer

Carrie Does Poems
Carrie Does Poems
Christmas Cheer
/

Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

  1. My spoken voice
  2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!


For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.


Just so you all know, if my poem is about a relationship, it might not be about my own current relationship or even about me.

Christmas Cheer

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

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