PLAYING WITH MARKDOWN CODES | POETRY: FORGOTTEN

_{Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash.}

FORGOTTEN

What have we

become?

Silent

shadows standing,
Waiting for something to be,
For prayers to become miracles,
For

some sort of pat

On

our

shoulders saying;

Match on, it's

going

to be fine?

But we do not really know

What it is we seek,

Or who we truly are, do we?

This air leaves

us breathless

As we

fall

,

Like

broken

angels

Shimmering

like

a mirage,

Like

something

unsure

Of its own

existence

,

Like a

slowly

descending leaf

That has

lost

itself

In the wind for too long

And doesn't know the way

Back home.

do not know

The

name

for pain

So we call

father,

Husband, boyfriend

and

friend.

We have

forgotten

how

To remember

scars

,

So

we have named them
Love bites, scratches,
And

feverish kisses.

We

cannot

name depression,

So we

call him meditation,
Alone time, tiredness, rest.

In this

place,

Where

truth

is a lost cry,

Crushed throat

suffocating
Around the brutal hands

of need,

How do we

rise

?

How do

we find ourselves,
Remember

our names

And the

names

of things?

For we have

forgotten

even

Our own

names

And all we remember is

You.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

This is my second time experimenting with the poem within a poem style. If you follow poetrymano on instagram you will know of the redacted style of creating poetry. I know it has more formal name, this style, but it is 4:44am in the morning and it is cold. Absolutely not a conducive environment to start thinking of the name of a writing style and I absolutely detest using google to find stuff like this.

Anyway, the style involves redacting words and sentences from a text and in that manner create new sentences and meaning. Redaction on its own, is popular among government ran security agencies who think certain information are not suitable for public consumption and as a result, they tend to black out certain phrases, sentences, paragraphs and words from documents which they consider sensitive.

Since I could not redact words here, I decided to create the experience and at the same time give us a poem within another poem. I think the visual experience is awesome and the possibilities for deriving meaning is endless. The poet can play with words and meaning in more ways with this technique. I will call this technique the Steemwarping technique for the sake of fun. 😂

I first used this technique in an old poetry post, MY NIGHTMARE. In this poetry piece, I focused more on creating images with markdown and words but you will still see a little of the steemwarping technique.

THE CODING

To achieve the steemwarping technique, I made use of several markdown codes. You can see it from the screenshots below. Take notes of the codes and the spacing. This is very important.

_{Take note of the markdown code at the beginning of the first line.}

_{Take note of the markdown code at the end of the stanza.}

If you miss a single code, something will go wrong and sometimes it won't be something you'd be quick to identify, so go through the editing again and again until you are sure.

It may seem to be too much trouble but the end result is worth it and it's poetry. Well that is how I create my steemwarping technique.

What unique thing have you created with markdown codes?

Screenshots are shots of my steemit editor taken with my phone, Infinix Hot5 Lite.