Revision

word count: 655
By:ERIN HULS

O, how I hate that dreaded word. Yes, that one above. The one that made you flip right to this page and want to read it with eagerly anticipating eyes and lips. We all love the word, the one that makes us correct our mistakes and rethink and rethink and rethink till our minds can think no more. It makes us sad and angry and make us do all kinds of mismatched things that make no sense. It makes me want to laugh at my computer then punch it angrily with craziness. It makes me want to drink twelve cups of coffee and watch the words dance across the screen in a fake- like drug craze and see if the words move on their own. It makes me want to smoke a bowl and laugh in high stupor at what I wrote. It makes me want to cry and pull out every eyelash and do a somersault. It makes me want to sprint around the block then see how long it takes me to clean my room. It makes me want to do hard drugs and understand how it feels to be a poet. It makes me want to analyze the periods in every sentence like Whitman did and drive him crazy to his death.

After all, that’s probably what killed him.

I hate the aftermath of a writing, because more is always less. It’s like a bad car accident. I mean, don’t colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Every sentence can mean something to the user. Every idea is unique and comes into its own. You can look and look at a piece of writing and decide it’s not good enough just like you can go to a pet store and pick out a puppy and decide it’s not good enough. You own what you wrote, what you swear, what you work with, what you sweat. It comes together sometime. But before it does, it make you go crazy. It is that I want to write better than I have ever written before. I want to write crazy, magical, like a drug-induced coma to the reader. And I want to do it all the first time.
When I write, I want kings to fall off their throne in amazement.
I want Celine Dion to sing my writing to everyone who will listen.
I want my parents to cry because they realize they gave birth to a prodigy.
I want my old college to shout “We taught her here!”
I want my writings to challenge the wars of nations.
I want my writings to make my cat speak in tongues and
My dog sit when reading them.
I want my writings to connect the oceans with bridges.
I want my writings to make the pope turn Lutheran.
I want my writings to make the front page of the New York times
And the bestseller list.
I want my writings to evoke cries from the heavens.
I want poets to throw up their hands and declare their retirement.
I want my writings to make the edges of paper turn to gold.
I want my writings change the outcome of someone’s day.
I want my writings to bring peace to everyone to reads them.
I want my writings to kiss the face of the devil and
To touch the hand of God.

Is that too much to ask? I want to change everything with my writings, to lament the cause of greats in the past. For tongues can utter so many occurrences, a flap of the flesh and snap of a wrist on a board will make the world come raining down. Part of me enjoys it, the shocking twisty turn of fate you make your writings form one way or another. But this love hate love hate hate relationship with revision has to watch its course. One day, I will stop it and never revise again. Someday.