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Majestic (Original Draft) |
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TEHUTI'S PER ON THE WEB NOTE: Scribbled poem alongside the "Nessie's Thoughts" and "Ideas" poems. This poem has a story behind it. It's the first item I ever had "published," in a cheesy cheap poetry anthology; I was unaware of the poetry scams that are rampant nowadays, and which I myself fell prey to several times in the late Nineties with poems such as "Ocean" and "Michigan Spring 1997." I was quite proud of it for a long time. In my defense, I don't think this particular anthology made you pay in order to be included, but I can't remember that well. Not in my defense, it's a poor poem which was undeserving of publication anywhere, same as all of my poetry.
Judging by the scribbles through certain words of this version, and the poor punctuation and formatting (I reformatted it for this posting, as I couldn't be sure where I intended line breaks to be), I believe this is the very first copy of it which I ever penned. Its presence alongside the other poems leads me to believe that I was trying out different poems to see which would be best for submission. In addition to the scribbled-out words, there's a note with an arrow pointing to the word "creature," saying, "Capital C every time." In the final version, "Majestic Creature" was capitalized as a name. I remember proofreading the copy they sent before publication. When it was published, they still somehow misspelled my middle name, "Lea," as "Lee." Sigh. Not-too-fond memory of this poem: I was asked to recite this for some other people at some kind of gathering. I stood up and got through all of the first line before completely forgetting it--at least, I THOUGHT I forgot it. Turns out that my mind didn't have the next line wrong but I thought it did, so I couldn't continue. I was so humiliated I sat back down and covered my head. What's most annoying is that this is today one of the only pieces of mine...maybe the only piece of mine...that I know by heart. I don't have the poetry anthology, Down Peaceful Paths (I don't recall which volume), in front of me so I'll have to guess the date as around 1990--same as the other poems. When I Google this anthology I can't find much info, though earlier volumes seem to date to 1990 and later ones to 1991, which bolsters my estimate of 1990. Majestic creature pauses, he stares at the skies Rainbows dance about, play games in his eyes His crystal horn is poised on high, his hoof stamps the ground Majestic creature tosses his head, then spins around Hoofbeats shatter the still morning air, the sun begins to rise Majestic creature's golden wings unfold, he soars into the skies Majestic creature flies away, his whinny announcing the morn Goodbye, goodbye, Majestic creature, Majestic the unicorn. |