Free Entry 1, Week 14

For my first Free Entry this week, I am revamping the poem of Free Entry from earlier in the year.

Original Draft

I stared at the manhole, anxiously waiting. Knowing they would pop out at any moment. They lived right in front of my house, at night I could hear them skittering around the shit-infested waters like cockroaches tap-dancing across a linoleum floor. Age five, I sit on my trampoline…staring. Bikes and people trample their home, and I know any moment they’ll spring up and ka-ra-te those people into channel 101…the static channel obliterated by our antenna. The large, violet, Tyrannosaurus told me they would. Every day, at 12:30 pm, he drilled that notion into my brain. He did not like un-punctuality. If I missed the day’s lesson, he’d lick me with his tail. Ten good swats across the back, transforming into my father who danced with his belt like drunken snake charmer. The belt was really a gypsy, buckles and bolts clinking together in rhythm-it was hypnotic. Bangles jingled insane harmony, chiming of the Pocahontas and pedophile John Smith that government Disney melted into the brains of children. Dreams, wishes, and love were all fucking lies at that age. Just ask the Falcons about 1998, when they bomb-shelled ATL’s heart and put the dirty-bird to shame, as if its filth wasn’t already bad enough. I had to burn my fan-jersey, watch it rise up in smoke and suffocate the second-star-to-the right: a ladybug trapped tightly in fisted fingers.


Revamped Draft:

Title: Notre Dame

I stared at the manhole living right in front of my house;
they would pop out at any moment. I heard them skittering
around shit-infested waters: cockroaches dancing across
a linoleum floor. Bikes and people trampling their home, know
that at any moment they’ll be digested into the static channel,
obliterated by our large, violent antenna. It told me they would.
Every day, at 12:30 pm; churning that notion into bitter un-punctuality.
Missing the day’s lesson earned me a tail’s lick- transforming
my father, who charm-danced with his drunken leather belt.
The gypsy buckles and bolts clinked together in hypnotic rhythm,
jingling the insane chime of the age-five pedophile melted
into our brains. The Falcons of 1998 dreamed, wished,
and loved all fucking lies at that age. Bomb-shelling
ATL’s heart shaming the dirty-bird, burning jerseys nation-wide.
Rising up in smoke and suffocating the North Star:
a ladybug trapped tightly in fisted fingers.