A man of considerable refinement
& impressive achievements in the subtle arts
dies alone to-day.

A body chewed through by age
& cancers lies
silent amid colored scraps (notes
to himself) - confetti of self-celebration;
life lived inside his own mind. A book,
solitary studies of Parisian streets
& moonlight - unfinished.

All the ships are sailing,
mastheads sinking beneath the horizon.
Sand in his shoes, sand
from a shore creating the illusion
of boats going down
to the bottom of the ocean. He thinks
maybe it is better
to be left behind.

I’ve released a draft of poem, current working title From the Shores of His Study, on Edit Red.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Edit Red is a (free) Myspace-like community aimed at readers & writers.

My EditRed.com Profile is here. You can go there to read the poem (direct link to poem), and you can sign up & add me as a friend if you want to keep up with what I’m posting.

In the next few days I’ll put the current version of “From the Shores of His Study” on my website. Though again I suggest signing up for Edit Red because 1) It’s a lot of fun, 2) You’ll find many very cool writers there, and 3) Some of my work will be posted with a “readers-only” restriction, meaning only people who sign up and add me as a friend will have access to it.

I’ve recently been introduced to a writing community site that I quite like, EditRed. It’s something like a Myspace for writers, oriented toward commenting on others’ work and having your own critiqued. The feature that interests me most is the ability to restrict access to your work. This means I can post poems or stories that can only be viewed by people I have accepted on my Readers list - an important result being that restricted poems/stories are technically unpublished (which matters if you want eventually to publish in certain magazines, etc.).

I plan to utilize this feature of EditRed to post (drafts of) work that I would otherwise not make available because of the potential constraints on future publication. This means that if you register on the site (it’s free, or I wouldn’t recommend it) and request that I add you as a reader, you’ll have first-look access to some of the writing I’m working on.

Go here to get an account: http://www.editred.com

My EditRed Profile: http://www.editred.com/danieldarwell

You needn’t write yourself to use the site (even though it is oriented toward writers). But if you do you can also join in, posting your own work for others to read.

-D