left hand draft
learning to write with my left hand
i.
does my left hand know what to say
if given pen?
are there voices in fingers otherwise
invisible?
but this still feels like right side
talking me.
don’t quite want letting
go.
right right right. insistent it is. habit or
toes like tide?
left shy? no.
some afeared maybe you’ll see another me
before I do.
right knows all the
tricks.
left has none.
ii.
you see, resistance can be not only illegible
but plain invisible!
like there was no ocean
suddenly.
yet usher in this hieroglyphic of bipedal
language. trace left-handed grace within
ability.
shall we write close and enigmatic, dare
any others than our own eyes to rightly read?
or share as devoted apostles with our kin
say here, this is possible?
make even our criss-crossing collisions into
sacred text?
patience is due bringing this child into
first light. embrace as you would an infant in
your muscled arms.
tender unpredictability.
iii.
symmetry is illusion if measured
in grams.
two pair of radial motion
perspectives, eye and ear but none
identical.
right sees some better. right ear too.
right is jealously convenient it seems.
but break a few bones then
observe.
left had to learn new skills and some
it never gave back. right acting at times now
completely dumb.
right stronger but less confident.
left more able but more prone to being
dismissive.
left built the pyramids but right
lays in them.
iv.
here, we’ll call this seed
knowing up knowing down, right-sided dirt
thirsty for bright.
tamp with your foot
set my thoughts in proper place.
random feather landed shadows can
scratch, peck away doubts.
already there are rumors
are stories are suggestive traces of
coming rain.
already parched top-soil words
are feeling new faced kin with the
hoe.
go ahead, breathe into me.
v.
are left-hand thoughts more an invisible
giant? like a horizon we seldom discern.
often don’t we think this, this
is our life? while
sleeping through the middles of wheat.
left says, yes
like wind with you.
I looked to see, is there a left-hand-pocket
name for me. like some say there is.
I looked. my name was still the same.
because mine’s same as my father’s was.
stranger under-skin from the first.
that other face. I already am.
neil reid © october 2011
Written for We Write Poems prompt (74) Left-hand first!
Please read other poets poems in response as well.
rambling comments:
Just a kid with a box of candy words. Do we need to take this seriously? As serious as fresh baked yams I think! (And confessing this prompt was my idea, so I’ll take the blame if you wish.) It is some measure odd and unexpectedly challenging I know.
I meant and take this prompt as literal – write with a poem, pen to paper, with your left hand (assuming you’re right-handed). Why? Because I take interest in the physical act of writing itself, and because something else just might get stirred up along the way. Some say right-brain, left-brain and that there is some difference there. But I don’t know directly for myself.
If you tried this prompt, it’s awkward isn’t it? Uncomfortable.
(But really, so what?)
Interesting how my “editor” and “self” raised their hands, daring to be plainly visible. Right-hand was clearly not so pleased. Not guessing what to expect this poem as a whole was written over several days (each day becoming a section here, although that wasn’t a plan, just the result). How I felt was a little different each day. Wouldn’t say there was a beacon burning bright, but yes, some difference in the light, something to explore again I think. (Do we learn to write, or walk, in just one day or even five?)
Although I do most of my writing, and all my editing, by keyboard, I do however often write first drafts with pen and ink. Self-serving vanity aside, I find something of pleasurable art about penmanship itself (and left-handed only expanded that abstraction of language and pen).
In the interest of full disclosure, and obvious, keyboard needed be the last port before publishing here, and yes, both right-hand and editor got to have something to say, but that’s alright as well, not meaning to exclude them some play (like I could anyway). Of note I did find by the end of this process less jealousy of right to left, less perceived need to hold them apart.
neil
PS. And boy, is this poem ever too long? Where’s that red pen?
bearly audible 
Neil, if left handedness is draft, then this poem is such a wonderful meditation on that.
left built the pyramids but right
lays in them.
You don’t need the red pen. You’ve drawn with the purple one! What wonderfulness, and I read this one out loud.
Well, a purple pen? I don’t know that one. Only figured purple was what girls used to draw little hearts above their “i’s”, leastwise so a long time ago.
Odd the line you selected to quote. That (to me) was one of a few more fully left-handed phrases I thought. Left in that way has yet unknown dimensions for me. I saw small brief sparks is all (yet also an unexpected sense of unity I don’t understand).
Thank you Irene,
neil
Fascinating exploration of an uncomfortable otherness. Most of it seemed genuinely off the wall, but the second section seemed more ‘normal’, more right-handed. Did you cheat on the second day?
You say ‘too long’ but wan’t that the whole point of the prompt? To do a little every day? I know I cheated, because I couldn’t get to terms with the prompt, but if I’d read yours first I might have been encouraged to have another go!
Thank you Viv. (and for tolerating my odd sense of prompts!) 🙂
And no, no cheating Viv, but while I can used my left hand writing after a fashion, how does one say what side of the brain gets to “think”? In that manner what you suggest has some truth I’d suppose. My only attended rule was which hand, not what thoughts came to be written; that I allowed to arrive as they did. Were those right-handed thoughts?
Ah Viv, but your “cheat”, as you say, was a delightful play when not knowing what else to do! I was pleased all the same.
neil
Short of having undergone a hemispherectomy (removal of a cerebral hemisphere), no one is a “left-brain only” or “right-brain only” person. My question to you Neil is when did you have the operation? I did write on a note pad with left hand only. Now I am forced to spend the better part of October in rehabilitation. Maybe I’ll see you there. Enjoyed your poem however I enjoyed your commentary a lot. Due to this exercise in exasperation my right hand is still displeased with my use of my left.
Regards,
Don
Ah Donald, how delightful. You know I got that same reaction too; right was some jealous of the change no matter how brief. But my, you must have a real gorilla behind that right hand to be so provoked! Maybe I’ve just a right-hand wimp!
But you know, as I said, I really first broke that ice because I “had to”, with a broken right wrist for a month. What I gained then has since remained, and even over those few days of this prompt if felt easier and easier. But what part of my brain was thus engaged more than normal… I’m not at all certain about. I only got a few clear moments when “something other” seemed coming to the front.
Left to me seemed not just more distant, because of lack of use, but distant because it felt more aloof. Surprise to me. My right seems the more friendly voice. (Not to be serious), but have you ever given attention to what common chores seem to favor one hand over the other? More than just the writing task.
Hope you’ve recovered by now! And thanks! You made a real smile for me with your “report”.
neil
And fresh baked yams are pretty darn serious. I continue in my envy [to be lifelong I suspect] of your ability to put words together in the way you do.
I love what Don says ‘my right hand is still displeased with my use of my left’ — I couldn’t even get off the ground, although I tried, because my right brain was so adamantly vocal from the start. Yet it wasn’t threatened by my move to left mousing… hmmm.
margo
Yea Margo, and baked yams are not only darn serious but darn yummy too!
You know, I do take as true, that we each are one being, although at times we like to say – physical and mental, like two ponds. But drop a stone in one and both respond. That’s about as scientific as I really meant with this prompt. Drop a pebble and see what comes; change the physical and see what mental might also reflect some measure of change. Strictly experimental, results unpredicted – and still largely a blur. But more might reveal more.
Perhaps I’m some more responsive that way? I recall how simple massage in the past also brought up emotional responses for me, while for some others, not so. (no meaning attached, just observational)
However you seemed hardly to be unresponsive huh? Maybe that adamant right voice deserves some polite attention, especially since it seems so swift to respond! (would that be called “fun”?) But it all seems a pretty polite expedition to apply upon our so called usual.
Or maybe I get bored too easily! 🙂
Just another pointy stick into the mud, like when I was a child.
Thank you Margo (you encourage me, whether you mean to or not!) 🙂
neil
Your poem speaks to me about the confusion/conflict I had in my brain in July 2006. That is when I dislocated my right elbow, and I was forced to use my left hand. I had to write on the blackboard (I am a Math teacher!!). Initially my mind resisted but I forced it.
With this exercise, I tried doing that not succeeding so well. Yet I turned in into something I hadn’t really thought of. Unconventional approach is needed for betterment of the brain.
BTW, my dislocation was a blessing. I use my left hand more now….
Ah yes, a fellow traveller who learned as me – because we had to. There is a real bump to get over switching hands this way, but doable.
While that was years ago for me as well, left seemed to remember what it was required to learn and I did notice a change even over the course of a few more days as for this prompt. It wasn’t a day to night change, but I could feel a few moments of some genuine shift in thought, although it had as much to do with a new sense of unity as a sense of difference. An unexpected result.
But yes, the whole prompt was meant only to be a rabbit out of a magic hat, something to provoke a difference in writing words and the connections we make, most often below conscious attention even if we still receive the results. For me it is about learning, allowing more possibilities.
And your poems often sound already speaking with voices most of us dismiss Gautami. I much appreciate reading your poems.
Thank you for the comments.
neil
poems are never too long or too short…just right…sometimes left……i read this with my R eye closed…nicely done Neil
Clever Wayne! Reading with your right eye closed! I am much amused.
Wonderful comment. Thanks!
neil
There is nothing like pen to a paper. First drafts are always pen for me! I don’t think I can write with my left even if I was drunk…perhaps your brain works in both speres better than others. Always an interesting read, when I visit.
Thank you Chrissy. Yes, there’s something genuine about a pen in your hand and a piece of real paper with words looking back at you. But I do better editing with a keyboard and screen… maybe it’s because of being slightly more distant? or seeing the whole of it?
Yet there’s also something about penmanship. How mere words scribbled on a page can have a form of their own, like the meaning was always theirs from the beginning. And all the better, more visible, when less under old familiar control – like left-handed writing, like writing blind (I do that too at times, like when writing-while-driving and I don’t dare take my eyes off the road – it can almost be like writing in another language!)
Thanks again.
neil