Blood-less.

I just pulled Blood, a poem I wrote last night about writing being so much blood spilled on the page. Apparently, it concerned a couple of folks. I defend my right to say it and would say it again.

The reason I pulled it? I capitulated this morning on the artwork, after self-doubt seized me, and I changed the graphic.

Now, in hindsight — and that is my only 20/20 vision — I wish I had not.

The original was a splash of blood on white; the new one was a stock photo of a blood-covered typewriter. It had all the subtlety of a stampeding rhinoceros.

I deliberately chose the original pic because it was graphic and stark and it was how I was feeling as I wrote it. Jack Herlocker expressed concern about the picture, wondering if it was my blood, and asking if I was OK. I was fine. The image just represented the letting. I appreciate that and given my well self-documented history of cutting as a way to deal with depression, I understand it came from a genuinely kind, and loving, place. Another writer suggested that the picture could somehow be so graphic as to cause a child to harm him or herself. I don’t agree. But what got under my thin Irish skin? Her suggestion that this space isn’t appropriate for that kind of writing. That the notion “there is a time and place for everything” somehow applies to poetry — shitty poetry or not. I could not disagree more, and I told the writer that.

The most poignant response came from Martin, one of Tim Barrus’s boys. Martin is deliberately mute, and writes only poetry to communicate. Martin wrote a poem more beautiful and haunting than any I could ever write, about how writing and killing and screams are blood. How writing is blood. Martin is, to me, a superhero, unleashing his thoughts on the page because right now, it is the only way he can, his only outlet to push out the terrible things that have happened to him. I do not know Martin, but if I did, I would want to hug him and tell him how very glad I am that he is alive. How very strong he is. If he would let me, I would hug Martin, and I would give him a journal of his own, so that he can get it out.

So my decision to change the picture from one that while jarring was hardly gory or something we haven’t all seen a million times, to one that I believed in my moment of self-doubt augmented my shitty poem? Was a stupid decision. My writing is mine; the art I choose to go with it is as much a part of the process of publishing as the words.

The least I can do is be as brave as Martin.

Going forward, I will continue to illustrate my words with pictures that help convey my truth, and not be cowed by self-doubt.