Sand Castles & Snow Forts, part deux

Something about me that listens to other people's responses to my poetry and automatically starts thinking about other ways to work on the poems. Not that I don't hear their comments or opinions nor value them. They just get me to start thinking of other ways to work on them. Tangenital responses. I may agree with some of what a critic (in the best sense of the word: someone who interacts with the material, not in an anyways-necessarily negative manner) has to say about the work in question and some other stuff he or she or they (in this case, she) have to say may or may not register (after all, the art is the responsibility of the artist within the community, not the other way around and not irresponsive of the community), but usually leaves an impression.

Christine Barnes brought up a good point in that the first and most of the last stanzas look like they were written by two different people, a la Jeckyll & Hyde. In fact, they were written on two separate sit-down occassions. She mentioned a bit about considering the nature of my audience - specifically my core audience - in terms "of context and performance." Add that to a discussion (in a very loose sense of the term) we had on a post she did on her spoken-word performance (Yeeaaahhh!) the other day about the nature of performance as a whole and the necessity of the hook and simplicity, I made some changes to the performance peice you'll see below. However, for my own personal pickiness, perhaps, I decided to stick to my guns of the flowing prowess of the of.

Sand Castles & Snow Forts

I see spring surprising again
Timing its chimes with the rise & convergence
of pretty patterns of
Robins serenading each other.

I think I've a God who grants
grace - who plays in the
wind in my face,
Who loves me,
who loves me so
I can't BELIEVE the way he loves me so.

He made the universe and all its elements
colored the lines with splendidness
how can I resist his love in my stubborn form
It’s like throwing up cold shoulders, sand castles,
& snow forts.

my God,
he loves me,
Yes, he loves me so –
I can’t BELIEVE the way he loves me so.