Don’t Throw Away Yr Old Stuff

/ johnlmalone

Don’t throw away your old stuff.

You will never have enough

new material to work with;

writing can be tough.






Put away your frail and flaccid.





put it in a book.





And in an idle moment, open it,





lighten up, have a look.




















Give it iron, backbone, 





a new voice, beat





find it a new form.





Let the old be reborn.










Everything will have its place.





Everything its time





the giddy, garrulous, the gruff.





Don’t throw away your old stuff..






			


	



				
	
			



	
			

			28 thoughts on “Don’t Throw Away Yr Old Stuff”		


		
		
    
				
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    I have a friend, gone now but not forgotten, an accomplished poet she was. At least a couple of times nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She had boxes and boxes of notebooks and a wish for them to be burned when she passed. Her wishes were, in fact honored.
    

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    Agree whole-heartedly.
    

    Be careful! A fire in 2015 took all of my poetry files, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, photographs, artwork, and even the digital repositories when it destroyed my desktop computer, laptop, tablet, and external hard drive, all in one swoop.
    

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    Well… accessibility is favorite, I guess; and therefore solutions like keeping all of your books and other collections in a waterproof, sealed, climate-controlled container in a separate facility are not ideal, eh?
    

    One thing could be to scan or type your content into a digital format and store it ‘in the cloud,’ so to say; i.e., in an online drive of some kind. Then, whatever happens (short of global catastrophic destruction) you can get to it (eventually?).
    

    Also, just be as careful as possible about fire safety. In our case, we were renting a home that had old, deteriorating electrical. The Fire Department told us they think a rodent probably chewed through the insulation, created a spark, which led to the fire. Not a lot one can do, really. Be careful where you choose to live? 
    

    It was (still is, actually) difficult to face the losses, but we also came to a more thorough understanding of the transitory nature of all things. We’ve long since lost count of how many times we have said, “It was just ‘stuff.’ or similar.
    

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